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?