The difficulties of 2006 have given Yahoo’s top executives new hope for this year, as early indications show their new advertising system has been working as advertised.
Yahoo Is Back, Just Ask Them
Yahoo probably won’t see a bottom-line impact from their Panama work until the second half of this year at the earliest. That hasn’t kept CEO Terry Semel or advertising business head Susan Decker from talking up their business.
At the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, the duo told attendees that the upgrades to their advertising platform’s relevance has had an impact within their Sunnyvale campus:
Panama “is now out and we are starting to smile again,” said Semel, who is also Yahoo’s chairman. “It has changed the mood and tempo of the company.”
By emphasizing relevance in its search advertising displays, Yahoo shows ads alongside search results that more accurately reflect what the searcher wanted to find. This encourages a greater likelihood the visitor will click an ad.
That makes Yahoo money. If the visitor finds that the advertiser has what he is looking for, that would lead to a conversion, which is why the advertiser has a campaign in play. Both Yahoo and the advertiser win.
By emulating Google’s relevance first approach, Yahoo hopes to bring some of Google’s customers and their money to Panama. It hasn’t happened yet, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt told a Florida media conference.
Yahoo probably needs to worry more about their existing customers first than the ones they might be able to draw from their search advertising rivals. Advertisers know when they are receiving a good return on their investments. Rebuilding the confidence their current clients have should be a more rewarding experience for Yahoo to enjoy financially.
