The CM Summit is now just two weeks away, and already I’ve asked for your input on five major voices in digital media and marketing: Arianna Huffington, Tony Hsieh, Tim Armstrong, Omar Hamoui, and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.Next up is Hilary Schneider, EVP Americas, Yahoo! Hilary is a crucial member of CEO Carol Bartz’s team, running Yahoo’s largest and most public business in the US, among others.
Yahoo has not had an easy time of it these past few years, and Hilary has been there for the whole of the ride, including the frenetic, off again on again negotiations over possible acquisition by Microsoft, the subsequent search deal, the shift from Semel to Yang to Bartz, and more.
Yahoo has recently declared its position as “the world’s largest media company” and seems intent, with acquisitions like Associated Content, on pushing even deeper into that world. So what’s up with Yahoo, and where might it be headed? I’d love your input. Here are a few questions I plan to ask, please add your own in comments:
– Why Associated Content, and why now? How will Yahoo differentiate from Demand (CRO Joanne Bradford will be at the conference) and AOL (CEO Tim Armstrong will be as well)?
– Overall, how has Yahoo’s content strategy shifted from your first year there (2006)?
– How is the Microsoft search deal going? What’s different now, what is the same?
– What do you make of Facebook’s recent moves (Open Graph, etc) and how deeply will Yahoo be integrating these services?
– You recently cut a big deal with Nokia. Why? What’s coming from that? Does Yahoo have a mobile strategy per se?
– What can marketers get from Yahoo that sets it apart, besides massive scale?
There are certainly more things to ask about. But I’ll ask you guys to help me with that. What do you want to hear from Hilary?
Yahoo’s main claim to be a technology company, as opposed to a media company, is that it will best discern personal interests in ad placement, and create efficient and effective automation for pricing and placing both branded and search advertising. What evidence can you provide that you are doing well in these?
Yahoo’s main claim to be a technology company, as opposed to a media company, is that it will best discern personal interests in ad placement, and create efficient and effective automation for pricing and placing both branded and search advertising. What evidence can you provide that you are doing well in these?
How many pages do you expect yahoo users visit regularly today (I think there are statistics that indicate the general population somewhere around 100 domains per month). Let’s pretend that users might “naturally” range of commanding a vocabulary of anywhere from 10 domains (or, if you like, even just 1 domain 😉 up to 1000 domains, and that the “normal” or “average” person presently uses about 100 domains per month. Where do you expect a typical yahoo user might fall on such a scale today? What about in 6 months? In a year? And beyond? Are the increasing number of partnerships with other domains (e.g. match.com — or even the nokia “homepage”) an indication that you expect the increasing online literacy of the general population will lead to an increase in the breadth of domains they use in the coming years? Do you expect Yahoo will be a leader in this “expansion” of cyberspace?
😉 nmw
You’ve made millions of dollars working there, even though your shareholders have suffered from a botched process with Microsoft, countless re-orgs, and a bit of an identity crisis. Should Yahoo sell to private equity and just stop trying to be a growth stock, or, should you just declare a dividend and call it a day?
The newspaper consortium turned out to be a pretty big win for you. By putting sales feet on the street in local markets, you’ve been able to enter the local revenue marketplace simply by providing the technology for local newspapers to do so. It’s been good for Yahoo, but how about the partners? There are complaints that the software doesn’t work as presented, and then Yahoo went and purchased Associated Content. As Ken Doctor wrote last week, “The Associated content aims at many of same topical categories that newspaper sites target; so the industry looks like it has gained new competition — competition owned by its partner.” So again, it’s pretty apparent Yahoo gains with the consortium, but is the partnership fully a win-win?