By Alexandra Berzon

Integration, integration, integration.

That was the theme of a Yahoo press lunch Tuesday in which media executives unveiled their plans to develop “brand universes” that piece together diverse Yahoo content into sites built around particular television shows, video games, movies, and entertainment personalities.

A Paris Hilton site, for example, would include a discussion group, a Flickr photo-sharing group, del.icio.us bookmarking tags, search result links, and Yahoo Answer results—all Yahoo products usually found in different places around the Internet, all featuring Paris Hilton.

The concept is part of what Yahoo execs say are to become major areas of focus for the company this year: bringing together disparate Yahoo-owned content and attracting younger users.

Apparently, Yahoo plans to gear its future around a youthful audience that wants to interact with and learn about one thing, in one place (and apparently loves cheesy celebrities).

The web giant has found itself in a crowded space in its efforts to be everywhere at once. Yahoo’s recent earnings were slightly above expectations, and the company is just now rolling out its delayed new search advertising technology that is expected to help it better compete with rival Google (see Yahoo Sees New Hope in Ad System).

Yahoo Sees New Hope in Ad System

But the company has weathered a tough year: accused of being unfocused, misdirected, and bad at integrating itself.

Sticky Situation

That problem was famously laid out in an executive’s memo leaked to the press in November that compared Yahoo to peanut butter spread “across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world” that results in “a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular” ( see Yahoo Plans Overhaul).

Yahoo Plans Overhaul

One major problem, according to the memo from Yahoo Senior VP Brad Garlinghouse, was too much redundancy, in which Yahoo products end up competing against themselves.

It’s the kind of thing analysts have been saying for a while.

“They’ve grown a lot of interesting things, but providing a centralized thread has been a challenge for them,” said Gartner media analyst Mike McGuire. “The linking part of it, providing a Yahoo user an easy pass to all those properties, is an interesting challenge.”

The weight of those problems now lies with popular entertainment brands like The Office, The Sims, Harry Potter, The Transformers, Halo, and Lost. Sites compiling Yahoo content around those themes will be rolled out in February, while a site dedicated to Nintendo’s Wii went live as a test in October.

The Office, The SimsLost

By the end of the year, Yahoo plans to unveil 100 such branded sites, Yahoo head of games/entertainment/youth Vince Broady told reporters Tuesday.

Latching onto Others’ Brands

Entertainment products that get their own featured sites will be chosen carefully based on the size and passions of the audience for that brand, Mr. Broady said, but they won’t necessarily involve a partnership with the brand owner.

“We don’t require brand owners to participate because we’re using Yahoo content, but we’re happy to push their agenda,” said Mr. Broady. “It’s an authentic environment we’re building to celebrate brands, and we expect that to be positive in nature.”

That puts Yahoo in an interesting spot that’s similar to a traditional fan magazine. The company’s not going to get paid for all that unadulterated praising and promoting of another company’s products.

If anything, it will move into agreements to share advertising revenue with the brand owners, although Mr. Broady said that Yahoo does not believe it would be required by law to do so.

Instead, executives hope the branded Yahoo sites will become targeted advertising spaces, and also drive up visits to other Yahoo sites.

But one initial concern is that without original programming on Yahoo sites, users will still be enticed to migrate elsewhere—and will take companies’ advertising dollars with them.

“If the Lost site on Yahoo takes me to ABC to watch a TV show, why would I go back to Yahoo when I find out I can get to ABC directly?” said Mr. McGuire. “Is this only a one-time hit for Yahoo?”