News that Yahoo's relationship with the advertising industry is deteriorating

Absrtact: Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer According to foreign media reports, sources said, Yahoo and advertising relations are deteriorating, advertising agencies want to get more attention from Yahoo Management, but Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer (Marissa Mayer) and COO-card

Yahoo CEO Marissa

According to foreign media reports, sources said Yahoo and the advertising sector is deteriorating, advertising agencies want to gain more attention from Yahoo Management, but Yahoo CEO Marissa (Marissa Mayer) and COO Henrik De-Castro (Henrique De Castro) Don't seem to be interested in it, they are positioning Yahoo as a technology company and are more willing to focus on users, people and entrepreneurs.

In the 8 months since Marissa as Yahoo's CEO, the company has spent a lot of time trying to win over consumers, new talent and entrepreneurs. Just this week, Yahoo has continued its acquisitions for several months, acquiring a mobile news application development Company, Summly, founded by 17-year-old genius.

However, while Mayer was on the "Today" show to introduce Yahoo's new homepage and to Wall Street about Yahoo's "everyday interests", Yahoo's advertisers were increasingly impatient to get into Mayer's sights and receive her attention, according to a number of advertising executives.

Advertising industry Dissatisfaction

Wall Street is clearly confident of Ms. Mayer's Yahoo, whose share price has risen by more than 50% since her tenure as CEO. But at the same time, many people in the industry believe that the advertising industry's dissatisfaction with Yahoo will in the long run a negative impact on the company, if Yahoo does not timely treatment. One of the keys to solving the problem is that Yahoo, the executive who is in charge of US operations, has attracted widespread attention in the advertising industry, but some executives say they can't wait any longer.

"This is critical, very critical," said an advertising executive who declined to be named, referring to the deteriorating relationship between Yahoo and the advertising agency, saying, "I don't know what their strategy is, but if the strategy involves advertising companies, then Yahoo must correct what it is doing." ”

Ms. Mayer and Yahoo Coo Henrik De Castro have made it clear that they are not interested in taking care of their relationships with the media, but it is these institutions that control the flow of huge advertising money from advertisers, the executive said. For example, Mr Castro has been known to ignore important e-mails from advertising executives.

Many in the industry have also expressed disappointment at the recent speech by Mr Castro at the annual meeting of the Interactive advertising agency (Interactive advertising according). A number of executives at the meeting said that Mr Castro had only introduced some basic data on Yahoo's performance, which applied to consumers who did not understand the company's profitability, rather than to advertisers who wanted real information.

"I'm still shocked by Yahoo's laxity in dealing with us," the executive said, "Not just Mr Castro, but Mayer too." They don't think advertising companies are important. ”

Partners, not customers

There are, of course, a number of factors in the ego, advertising agencies, especially control the largest advertising budget agents, has been to meet the needs of the other content publishers. They want to be partners, not just customers who pay Yahoo. That has been a long-standing problem in the advertising industry since ancient times, but it has not prevented many ad executives from building very close ties with Yahoo's former US business director and Ross Levinson, the interim CEO, Ross Levinsohn.

But the former Google (Weibo) engineer Mayer has redefined Yahoo as a "technology company", which in part means that the close relationship that advertising executives expect will drift away. Indeed, during Google's tenure, Ms. Mayer and Mr Castro have never been in close contact with the advertising community, so they do not see any need to do so at Yahoo.

In fact, Yahoo still needs to establish a close relationship with the advertising company. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Yahoo's display advertising sales fell 5% from a year earlier, to $520 million trillion, from 546 million trillion dollars in the same period, excluding traffic costs.

Yahoo sales executives at all levels do not have much to share about Yahoo's future consumer and advertising offerings, and they are waiting for an outstanding U.S. business executive to become the chief contact between Yahoo and the advertising community. A familiar source said that Yahoo would not announce the appointment in the near future and that Mayer would appear more in the advertising industry in the next few months.

Adam Shlachter, senior vice president of Digitas Media at the digital marketing company, said that in the past Yahoo would have been generous in showing its product roadmap to advertising companies and getting their support, but in the last 8 months it has not happened. "I don't know their product strategy, don't know the content strategy, do not know the data strategy," Schrachette said, "It will hurt them, it thought that people's attention is readily available." ”

Change Sales Description

Rob Norman, chief digital officer of GroupM Global, the media arm of the world's media giant WPP, Rob Norman that the problem between Yahoo and advertisers and advertisers comes not from who is leading the company but from the sheer size of its customers Lack of a credible sales description.

"Yahoo is no longer in the center of the market, according to People's view of online marketing," Norman said. "In this case, you have to re-establish the relevance." Yahoo's management should make the company more relevant, both a business challenge and a PR challenge. I'm not worried about who leads the company, but more about how to do it. ”

Norman said Yahoo should tell advertisers how they would help solve the most serious business problems, but this is not happening now. The new message from Yahoo, he believes, is a site that wants to be a "daily interest", which may be a good internal battle slogan, but as a message to the outside, it is too general.

Yahoo statement

In response to news of the worsening relationship with the advertising community, Yahoo issued the statement: "With the advertising agency and its holding companies, as well as advertisers, the relationship between the very important to Yahoo." Recently we are building a team dedicated to managing the relationship with advertising agencies, and we are demonstrating our strengths in a more interactive way. We also set up a team around the vertical business to meet the specific needs of our customers more quickly, no matter what industry they are in. We are committed to developing a lasting partnership for the future. ”

Despite the gradual depletion of the agency's patience, some executives believe Yahoo's approach is improving. Ms. Mayer and other Yahoo executives are focused on doing the right thing, Jeffer Lank Razorfish, Chief media officer of the advertising agency Publicis Groupe, the French advertising and communications giant Yang Lion group.

"I think that as long as Yahoo can win entrepreneurs, it can drive innovation," Lanctort says. "As long as they can innovate, they can win consumers." Where do advertising companies come to be? Consumer shone innovation companies. ”

Steve Katelman, executive vice president of Omnicom Media Group, who is responsible for global strategic partnerships, is another Steve Katelman AD executive with cautious optimism. Ms. Mayer, he said, had been badly judged because she had solved the problem internally. "If she would just stand up and say, ' That's the way we do things ', then I'd be extremely skeptical," he said. ”

But if things do not change after six months, I will stand on the other side and think ' time is up ', Katelman says. ”