Sue Decker
Did Yahoo President Sue Becker See New CEO As Snub?
Despite the suggestion by ValleyWag, that incoming Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s first job would be to fire President Sue Decker, seems Decker beat her to the punch by announcing her resignation.
Decker has overseen many of the few innovations and major changes at Yahoo during the past few years – as Terry Semel stood down to give Jerry Yang the CEO spot and their stock fell from the 30s to below 10. But, ValleyWag reports Decker was ambitious and “engineered a reorganization that drove out her chief rival, COO Dan Rosensweig, and then led a palace coup to drive out Hollywood movie mogul Terry Semel as CEO.”
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock stated ““The Board thanks Sue for her service as President, the important contributions she has made to Yahoo!’s development in a variety of roles over the past 8-1/2 years, and her willingness to work with Carol Bartz to ensure a smooth transition. We respect her decision to move on to other challenges and wish her only the best.”
The news of the new CEO and Decker leaving did little to impact the Yahoo stock price today.
Report: Carol Bartz Accepted Yahoo Offer to Become CEO
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Carol Bartz has accepted Yahoo’s offer to become their next CEO. I have no link at the moment. Just a breaking news headline:
Bartz is currently executive chairman of Autodesk, a design software company. She formerly was CEO of Autodesk and was an executive as Sun Microsystems. She currently serves on the boards of Cisco (with Jerry Yang) and Intel (with Sue Decker).
Yahoo! stock was on the rise in reaction to the news. At the time of this post, Yahoo was at $12.38.
Rich Riley to Head Yahoo! Europe and Canada
Yahoo! is filling the void left by Europe and Canada head, Toby Coppel, by hiring from within. Rich Riley, head of Yahoo!’s Advertiser & Publisher Group in Europe, has been tapped to fill the role. He will be based in Rolle, Switzerland, where Yahoo! Europe’s headquarters are located.
Rich Riley has been at Yahoo! for almost ten years, joining the company with the acquisition of his startup, Log-Me-On.com. He rose up through the ranks and at one point led the U.S. Small and Medium Business Division.
Sue Decker, president, Yahoo! Inc., said, “The appointment of Rich Riley represents the next phase in the evolution of our European and Canadian businesses, enabling us to build on the great foundations laid by Toby Coppel. We are committed to continuing our growth as a leader in Europe and Canada.”
Commenting on his new role, Rich Riley, said, “Yahoo! is one of the leading global internet companies and a leader in both Europe and Canada. With our focus on creating brilliant starting points for consumers and being a must buy for advertisers, we will continue to grow these key businesses. I look forward to leading these businesses and driving Yahoo! forward in Europe and Canada at this exciting time.”
Yahoo’s Sue Decker Weighs In on the Defense of the Search Ad Deal with Google
Yahoo President Sue Decker took to the Yahoo Anecdotal blog to defend the search advertising deal her company struck with Google a few months ago.
Google has been doing the heavy lifting when it comes to defending the deal to the critics. So, it was about time we heard from Yahoo again on the deal.
But Decker started off with a sarcastic tone. Her first paragraph ended with:
Since the critics clearly don’t understand the deal and what it means for Yahoo!, Google, advertisers, and users, it’s time for some myth-busting.
Sue, if you want to win friends to your side, you shouldn’t alienate these critics. Many of them are AdWords customers!
But Decker devolves even further by saying making her two points about what the deal does for Yahoo instead of making it about the customer:
- Yahoo! will use this agreement to help us become a stronger competitor in all aspects of online advertising; and
- Yahoo! is not exiting the sponsored search business. We plan to remain a strong player in sponsored search.
I know that Decker has probably been consumed with trying to save a flailing Yahoo. But the fact that she’s going after this argument by defending the business aspirations of Yahoo might show why this company is struggling in the first place.
Companies succeed when they focus on the customer. But Yahoo is focused on stock prices and board preservation. This is not the way to win the hearts of search advertisers or investors.
Otherwise, Decker made points that Google has made. She says there will not be price setting between Yahoo and Google because advertisers set the prices through the bidding process. The price is related to the value which is based on demand.
Decker even played on Google’s unofficial motto “Do no evil” by saying the partnership would be implemented through respect for the Hippocratic Oath “first, do no harm.”
To be fair, Yahoo probably needs this deal in order to bring in some extra income. What they need to do what that income is invest in innovation that brings a better search experience to users. That’s what the search industry needs right now. And it’s the only way to truly compete with Google.
Related Reading:
To Fear or Not to Fear: That is the Question (About the Google-Yahoo Ad Deal)
Yahoo Rebrands AMP as APT and Launches
Last April, Yahoo unveiled details of a forthcoming online display advertising platform called AMP, to be released in the third quarter of 2008. Well, it’s Q3 and AMP was launched this week at Advertising Week in New York. Except, it’s not called AMP anymore. It’s been rebranded as APT.
Jon Hamm, star of the AMC Drama Mad Men which is based on a 1940s ad firm, was on hand to celebrate. This really excited Jerry Yang.
“The advertising landscape has changed dramatically since the days when Don Draper was roaming the halls of Sterling Cooper,” said Jerry Yang. “While Mad Men celebrates the Madison Avenue of 40 years ago, APT from Yahoo! clearly represents the future.”
APT is being touted as a streamlining of the display advertising process, from planning to buying and optimizing.
APT will undergo a phased roll-out. Select newspapers get the first stab at it, specifically publishers the San Francisco Chronicle of Hearst Newspapers and San Jose Mercury News of MediaNews Group.
Features include:
- Guaranteed cross-selling with pre-defined selling rules
- Ad Exchange for non-guaranteed inventory
- Advanced audience targeting techniques based upon behavior and geography
- Inventory lookup and forecasting across individual and partner sites
- Creative workflow automation and personalization
- Powerful rate card tools for improved yield management
- Filters for better controls around creatives
- Flexible and powerful APIs
- Federated ad call to support multiple ad formats
“One of the major benefits of APT from Yahoo! is the fact that it’s an open system, designed to enable advertisers to reach their audiences in their favorite places across the Web, and publishers to monetize inventory across the broadest possible demand channels,” said Sue Decker. “As we transform the advertising marketplace, we’re excited to have key members of the Newspaper Consortium, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, lead the way in this historic journey.”
APT (as AMP) has often been one of Yahoo’s defenses about the strength of its company. Yahoo has undergone much scrutiny in the past year, especially since Microsoft attempted to acquire it. They’ve placed high hopes on AMP, and now it’s go time.
Related Reading:
Yahoo! to Integrate Right Media and AMP Ad Management Platforms, But When?
Yahoo! AMP! plus Full Text: Yahoo Proxy Statement
Yahoo Board Meeting: 60 Second Summary
Jim Goldman, who writes Tech Check at CNBC, is live blogging the Yahoo shareholder meeting.
The turnout was light and much lower than expected. So far there have been no fireworks, with only a facetious request that Yahoo Board members punch time cards to prove how long they’re working. (Roy Bostock said, no problem.)
Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock reiterated the standard Yahoo strategy and said the company was hitting its targets.
He noted, “Microsoft’s initial $31 bid was the only written proposal ever received by the company…In an offhand comment, (Microsoft said to one of our executives), ‘There may be a few more dollars on the table. It was never explicitly communicated to the board, and never communicated in writing.”
On Yahoo’s partnership with Google, Bostock said, “After Microsoft withdrew the offer, and only after they withdrew the offer, we entered into a deal with Google.”
Jerry Yang talked about how he’s (still) excited to transform the company (again) given its tremendous assets and online audience. Sue Decker will discuss new display advertising algorithms (which sound suspiciously like Panama Redux).
Why did so few shareholders attend? Have they resigned themselves to a $20 stock or do they think there’s nowhere to go but up?
Yahoo Q2 2008 Disappoints Wall St.
Yahoo Second Quarter 2008 Financial Results
• Revenues were $1,798 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 6 percent increase compared to $1,698 million for the same period of 2007.
• Marketing services revenues were $1,587 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 7 percent increase compared to $1,486 million for the same period of 2007.
“Yahoo!’s transformation gained momentum in the second quarter as we announced new product initiatives and partnerships along with solid financial results,” said Sue Decker, president Yahoo! in a statement. “We advanced our position with users by opening up Yahoo! through new innovative offerings like SearchMonkey and BOSS in search and have seen great improvements with Buzz in the freshness of content on our home page. Our commercial agreement with Google is another great example of our open strategy and we expect it will strengthen our competitive position as a leading provider of search and display advertising. On the advertising side, our growing list of major agency partners including Publicis, WPP, Havas and premier publishing partners including walmart.com, and CNET and Turner are great examples of our ability to be the partner of choice across search and display advertising. We remain confident that our efforts will lead to a stronger and more profitable Yahoo!.”
o Marketing services revenues from Owned and Operated sites were $1,016 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 14 percent increase compared to $892 million for the same period of 2007.
o Marketing services revenues from Affiliate sites were $571 million for the second quarter of
2008, a 4 percent decrease compared to $594 million for the same period of 2007.
• Fees revenues were $211 million for the second quarter of 2008, a less than 1 percent decrease compared to $212 million for the same period of 2007.
• Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) were $1,346 million for the second quarter of 2008, an 8 percent increase compared to $1,244 million for the same period of 2007.
• Operating income for the second quarter of 2008 was $101 million, a 45 percent decrease compared to $185 million for the same period of 2007.
o Operating income for the second quarter of 2008 includes incremental costs of $22 million
incurred for outside advisors related to Microsoft’s proposals to acquire all or a part of the
Company, other strategic alternatives, the proxy contest, and related litigation defense costs.
• Free cash flow for the second quarter of 2008 was $231 million, a 30 percent decrease compared to $328 million for the same period of 2007.
• Net income for the second quarter of 2008 was $131 million or $0.09 per diluted share compared to $161 million or $0.11 per diluted share for the same period of 2007.
“Despite a difficult economic environment, we posted solid results in line with the ranges we indicated in April,” said Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer, Yahoo! in a statement. “GAAP revenue was $1.8 billion, with operating cash flow on a normalized basis coming in at $449 million. Our diverse advertiser base and compelling value proposition for our customers were key factors behind Yahoo!’s strong second quarter performance.”
Yahoo Plans Reorg: More Centralization
Confirming recent rumors of another coming reorganization, Yahoo today announced its plans to centralize many of its product and engineering teams into one regional group in the U.S., rather than maintaining separate divisions for each set of products.
Yahoo is creating three new teams that will report to President Sue Decker:
- An Audience Products Division will assume responsibility for companywide product strategy and product management. It will be led by Ash Patel who previously managed the company’s Platforms & Infrastructure group.
- A U.S. region with accountability for all go-to-market activity in the U.S. will be led by Hilary Schneider, who previously headed the company’s Global Partner Solutions group.
- An Insights Strategy team will assume responsibility for centralizing and executing a common strategy for the use of data and analysis across Yahoo. The company plans to name this group’s leader within the next few weeks.
According to Decker, these moves have been in the works for several months, and complement last year’s changes to centralize more of Yahoo’s business.
“The changes we’re making today will help deliver superior global products for users and enable faster and better decision-making,” Decker said in a statement. “This is a logical next step in light of our success last year in moving to a more centralized approach to developing world-class marketing products. We have planned these changes deliberately over the past several months to clarify responsibilities and to capitalize on the scale advantages while allowing for fine tuning to meet local market needs.”
Yahoo has restructured its search group, which recently lost SVP and General Manager of Search Vishal Makhijani to Russian search engine Yandex. Prabhakar Raghavan has been tapped to direct search strategy, and Tuoc Luong is the interim leader of the search product team. Both Prabhakar and Tuoc will also continue in their roles as the leaders of Yahoo! Research and Search Engineering respectively. In addition, David Ku will lead the Advertising Technology Group within Search.
Yahoo is also making changes to its technology organization, devoting resources to developing a cloud computing and storage infrastructure; moving more of Yahoo onto common platforms; and creating a stronger partnership between product and engineering teams.
The new Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group will be charged with developing a computing infrastructure that balances scalability with cost effectiveness. It will also move all consumer-facing platform teams to the Audience Technology Group, led by Venkat Panchapakesan.
Yahoo’s Latest Partnership: Online and Mobile Advertising Integration with Publicis
Today, Publicis announced the launch of their new digital advertising initiative, VivaKi. And Yahoo wasted no time sending out a press release regarding the new partnership with Publicis, perhaps in an attempt to compete with the news of Google’s Ad Planner. But with Google already having its own agreement with Publicis, Yahoo is really just playing catch-up.
Yahoo’s partnership is a dizzying array of product integrations between the two. Let’s dive in:
First up, mobile marketing. Publicis’ mobile marketing agency, PhoneValley, will be the first global agency to integrate Yahoo’s Blueprint, a mobile developer platform language. The integration aism to aid brands in scaling their messages to a global level. Publicis will also be creating “microsites” to leverage Yahoo’s Smart Ads, a mobile advertising tech solution.
Another part of the agreement is Publicis’ integration of Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange with their current media buying systems. Yahoo touts Right Media Exchange as “the largest open community of buyers and sellers including advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks.” Yahoo hopes the integration will help clients of Publicis be able to target demographics with a single campaign buy.
“Our goal in working together with advertisers and agencies is to help them build brands, reach consumers and increase sales in new ways,” said Yahoo President Sue Decker, who recently spoke about the online advertising transformation and is believed to be behind Yahoo’s latest reorganization. “Through this relationship, Yahoo! and Publicis will empower the next generation of innovative advertising solutions.”
“This partnership with Yahoo! takes the biggest challenge facing marketers today-the need for hyper-personalization on a massive scale-and turns it into a scalable, direct opportunity for Publicis Groupe clients,” said David Kenny, Managing Partner of Publicis Groupe VivaKi. “By creating an evolved business structure built specifically to capitalize on this medium, we’ll advance the larger industry and in the process set new standards for online advertising innovation.”
Yahoo Re-Organizes, Execs Drop Like Flies
Carl Icahn may not have to worry about the Yahoo! severance plan as much as he originally thought. Yahoo is reorganizing and execs are bailing left and right, and they’re not even waiting for a proxy board takeover to make their moves.
Earlier this week came the news that Jeff Weiner was leaving the search company. Now, Qi Lu, Yahoo’s Executive Vice President of Search and Advertising Technology is headed out the door. So is Vish Makhijani, Senior Vice President of Search, is also exiting.
Brad Garlinghouse, author of the (in)famous Peanut Butter Manifesto, is “considering alternatives” but is widely expected to bolt as well.
Lu, Makhijani, and Garlinghouse were all moved to the newly created Global Products group, to be headed by Ash Patel, the current Exec. Vice President of Yahoo’s Platforms and Infrastructure, according to Kara Swisher. Patel has been with Yahoo since 1996 and is not seen as the type of leader needed to jumpstart the company.
However, the LA Times reported that Lu was already planning to move to China while Makhijani is heading over to Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, to lead SF-area operations.
Another move expected in the reorganization is the expanded responsibilities of Hillary Schneider, Executive Vice President of Global Partner Solutions. Schneider and Patel will be peers and report directly to Yahoo President Sue Decker, who is said to be largely responsible for the re-organization.
Still, the founders of at least 2 acquired companies aren’t sticking around for the new arrangement. Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter are saying, “Adios!” to Yahoo.
At least, that “Now Hiring” notice from a few weeks ago is finally starting to make sense.
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