yahoo
You are currently browsing articles tagged yahoo.
Earnings reports hit yesterday for Apple and Yahoo and followers were, respectively, happy and disappointed. Apple is really kicking it selling phones, computers and tablets (What else is there, food?) Yahoo is sliding along, selling ads and content. Its revenue was up, but net revenue – revenue after it shares da monies with partners – down.
Carol Bartz, about whom I’ve written some good things, is at that place in time in her tenure as CEO where her performance and the company’s momentum should just about be judged. If not now, certainly in a quarter or two. So let’s table that for the moment.
What Yahoo Should Do.
If Apple is doing so well and Yahoo just gliding via cost-cutting and reorganizations then perhaps Yahoo should take a good close look at Apple custies (that’s bond trader for customers). The account planners at Yahoo’s agency Goodby Berlin and Partners might want to follow around Apple users for a week or so and see what kind of 1s and 0s are passing over their phones, Macs and tablets. Do Apple users intersect with Yahoo at all during the course of the day? And if not, why not? Apple users are worth studying.
Yahoo’s Competition.
Yahoo and Aol (not Apple) are competitors… both fighting for the same cheese. They share the same content strategy so I enjoy studying them. It’s still neck and neck, with a slight edge to Aol. But both need an idea. A powerful brand idea, dripping with beyond-the-dashboard consumer value. I’m waiting. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: Account Planning, AOL, apple, Carol Bartz, goodby berlin and partners, ipad, iphone, mac, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
Cambio is AOL’s first big bullet in the content strategy war with Yahoo. It makes me think AOL just may win this thing. I love Carol Bartz’s decision to go with the content approach for Yahoo, but still think her approach a bit too diffuse. They still possess a start page mentality over there – start page meaning, set your personal home page to Yahoo.
AOL, on the other had, spent enough time with Time Warner to learn a thing about packaging content. They probably own a camera or two and kept some producers and directors around, so by signing the Jonas Bothers and their music company to a deal with the new AOL online music channel Cambio, cranking up some new content quickly may be very doable. This is a transformative move. It may be the first real melding of music and new media we’ve seen; think Little Steven’s Garage (dot com) for kids. And, with a big, scalable company surrounding it.
AOL, BTW, should bring Little Steven and his garage over to the fold. No brainer. Why? Because he’s a great curator, a special personality and he has a loyal following. The radio doesn’t do his project justice. I like this move for AOL — and though Cambio may only be the learning ground for something bigger, it’s a great idea. Tim Armstrong is human, but he’s beginning to hit stride. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: AOL, Cambio, Carol Bartz, online music, Tim Armstrong, time warner, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
Yahoo is buying Associated Media and its federation of 380,000 writers (Posters) who according to ComScore generate 16M monthly uniques. Yahoo is paying $100 million for the ability to advertise to Associated’s audience and the deal also includes some technology which allows for the monitoring and prediction of reader content proclivities. This is a big move for Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO, and shows she is putting money into the content strategy.
I look at content portals like Yahoo and AOL a little bit like big retail malls. A good portal, like a good mall, has lots of tenants but there is always what is called an anchor tenant — a big store that draws in lots of people. In my view, this $100 million play is more about finding an “anchor” tenant (or ten) among Associated Media’s writers who will propel Yahoo’s numbers upward, rather than a crowd sourcing effort to generate mass. It’s like putting a seine net in the ocean to catch krill but finding some big fish. Yahoo needs next generation big fish. Big Posters. It’s a very expensive move, but should work for them. The portal story, IMHO, is about quality not quantity. But that’s just me. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: AOL, associated media, Carol Bartz, consumer generated content, Posters, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
Google built a business, quite well I might add, on perfecting search and search usability. They funded the business with advertising. The brand play was not to be the world’s greatest advertising platform (something Yahoo and AOL didn’t understand), it was all about search.
Back in the day (last week, hee hee) Google search was all about the Web. Finding things digital. This week, it’s about seeing and searching for digital things in the physical world. So mobile apps and navigation are the rage. Google hasn’t led the way here, Apple has, but Google wasn’t first in search either.
What’s next?
What’s next is search for physical things in the physical world. Call it worldwide inventory. What is worldwide inventory and how will it work? Not sure, but this cantaloupe sized brain of mine says it may have to do with barcodes. Now you can’t put a bar code on an $11,000 hip replacement in Mexico (You can’t?) but you can put one on a $12.00 case of Honest Tea with torn labels. The ability for mankind to find real things, in proximity, with their smart phones is what Google will be doing over the next decade. And that hip replacement or $6,000 valve bypass in China will be something worth searching for. Stay with search Google — it will soon be atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
Worldwide Inventory may sound like a Pearl Jam song but it’s an Eric Schmidt song. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: AOL, barcode, eric schmidt, google, Honest Tea, maslow, mobile, worldwide inventory, yahoo
Aol. and Yahoo have both finally figured out that good content begets readership, viewership, referral, and participation which begets — the same. These two seminal online brands will be dooking it out for years to come. They both took different paths to get here and both have CEOs with unique perspectives, but the battle should be fun to watch. Coke and Pepsi, AT&T and Verizon fun.
Armstrong vs. Bartz
My bet is on Aol. Tim Armstrong hitched his ride to a rising star (Google) and got that success smell on him — but I think he created some of that smell with his focus and good leadership. Carol Bartz’s career advanced by good blocking and tackling and good business decisions, something Yahoo hadn’t had for a while prior to her arrival. Yahoo made lots of decisions, just not with a solid brand idea driving them. Until proven otherwise, I’ll give Mr. Armstrong the edge and write it off to “derring do.”
Ad dollars are moving online, no doubt, but those in the know will tell you the lion’s share are going to Google thanks to AdWords and their direct-to-consumer, DIY, analytics-powered ad model. As Aol. and Yahoo re-create their online brands and lead the market in the generation of original content (paid and contributed), search will stay a powerful, lucrative utility, but won’t be the best way to find good content. That will be the domain of Aol and, hopefully, Yahoo. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: AOL, at&t, Carol Bartz, coke, google, pepsi, Tim Armstrong, Verizon, whatstheidea, yahoo
I’m moving my blog over to a more grown up platform thanks to some friends at UnReal Web Marketing and one of the first posts they selected for the test site was titled “Dashboard My Ass.” Dashboards are the rage for senior executives today, putting all the important business metrics at their fingertips. And as we know, metrics are Nirvana (sorry Kurt) in marketing today. I love metrics, don’t get me wrong, but in my work they can’t fuzzy the judgment.
Taking 10 or 20 sales measures off a dashboard and building market segments, salesforces, ad campaigns, and new products teams around them is complex business. At a big company, this work may take scores of people. (Think Yahoo.) But how do you make sense of all that dashboard data and product planning activity in a way that is simple, easy-to-digest, and meaningful for consumers? How do you create a simple branding idea out of all that complex data?
Well, you don’t do it with a dashboard. It’s a brains and hearts thing. When the Galvanic Skin Response of the executive team starts to perk, that’s when you know you have an idea. I never saw a dashboard buy soap powder. Peace.
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: Brand Planning, marketing dashboard, Nirvana, unreal web marketing, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
I’m moving my blog over to a more grown up platform thanks to some friends at UnReal Web Marketing and one of the first posts they selected for the test site was titled “Dashboard My Ass.” Dashboards are the rage for senior executives today, putting all the important business metrics at their fingertips. And as we know, metrics are Nirvana (sorry Kurt) in marketing today. I love metrics, don’t get me wrong, but in my work they can’t fuzzy the judgment.
Taking 10 or 20 sales measures off a dashboard and building market segments, salesforces, ad campaigns, and new products teams around them is complex business. At a big company, this work may take scores of people. (Think Yahoo.) But how do you make sense of all that dashboard data and product planning activity in a way that is simple, easy-to-digest, and meaningful for consumers? How do you create a simple branding idea out of all that complex data?
Well, you don’t do it with a dashboard. It’s a brains and hearts thing. When the Galvanic Skin Response of the executive team starts to perk, that’s when you know you have an idea. I never saw a dashboard buy soap powder. Peace.
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: Brand Planning, marketing dashboard, Nirvana, unreal web marketing, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
Penny Baldwin is Yahoo!’s new brand savior. Reporting to CMO Elisa Steele, Ms. Baldwin is tasked with creating the way forward for the Yahoo brand. Newsflash: If you are plotting the course for the brand, you are plotting the course for the product (hopefully).
For years Yahoo has been a multi-headed dragon: part search, part start page, part portal and Web tool kit. Ms. Baldwin knows this and will likely use a variety of means to look into Yahoo’s past and determine where Yahoo’s brightest embers lie. Where its greatest loyalties reside and the treasure trove of revenue amassed. Researchers will look at competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Anthropologists will delve in to time-of-day usage and where other media intersects. All this info and data will go into the hopper and be extruded into a hardened strategic mass that be delivered to 72 and Sunny or some such shop(s) and $65 million and six months later we’ll be humming a new song or reciting a new line, but Yahoo will still be foundering.
Here’s what needs to happen: Yahoo needs to get rid of 65% of its technologists, replacing them with really good free-agent and draft pick content creators: bloggers, video bloggers, podcasters and journalists. People make appointments with internet properties to be informed, entertained, enlightened, and educated. Yahoo isn’t "my home on the web.” People don’t need the weather and horoscopes and puzzles and shizz, they want curated pages leading them to the coolest original content. Invest in content Ms. Baldwin. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: 72 and sunny, elisa steele, penny Baldwin, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
Microsoft Bing, a new search engine going live next Wednesday, has set its sights on Google. Word on the Avenue is that Bing will be supported by over $100 million in advertising and with preloaded Bing search bars on new HP and Dell computers the communications spend will go way beyond. I like the product name and from what I’ve read I suspect Bing will have some good traction, but two things I anticipate will get in its way: over-engineering and a feisty ad campaign.
Google started out simple and people loved it. Bing will start out rich in features, with more feature creep on the way, and the masses may balk. Can you say Mahalo?
The advertising, which I’m assuming will come from Crispin Porter, should be good. But it will be a bit competitive towards Google and will be the wrong approach. I would go just the opposite and use my Microsoft Bing dollars to tell everyone how great Google is. Be nice doggies. Unexpected with praise. At the end of the spots, don’t zing Google, tell people the message was brought to you by Bing and ask people to give it a try. That, in and of itself, will signal it’s different. The end. Peace!
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: Bing, dell, hp, mahalo, microsoft, search engine, whats the idea, whatshteidea, yahoo
I love to pay attention to great corporate leaders. They are decisive, make informed decisions and once you know what drives them are predictable. Always, they are always strategic.
Were my parents to comment on Michael Dell’s fall from corporate grace over the years, they would whisper “Is he on drugs?” He was such a good CEO and now he’s all over the place.” I am not at all suggesting Mr. Dell uses drugs, but he did go from the number one business executive in the country to someone who is unpredictable, a follower, unfocused and seemingly lacking in discipline. He needs to be hypnotized and brought back to those days in his dorm room at U Texas, so that he can find his vision.
Carol Bartz on the other hand has moved into the CEO role at Yahoo!, a company which is more like five companies, and decided to “simplify.” Bravo. Yahoo’s problem is that it has forgotten what it is, focusing instead on earnings, stock prices, business partners, platforms and, and, and… Ms. Bartz approach, after only a few weeks on the job, is less silos, less layers, fewer agendas, more focus, more Yahoo. Today’s smartest marketers are simplifying.
Possibly Related Posts:
Tags: Carol Bartz, dell, marketing leadership, michael dell, whats the idea, whatstheidea, yahoo
Recent Comments