Yahoo Names New VP Of Marketing

Yahoo has named Penny Baldwin as its senior vice president, of global integrated marketing and brand management.

Baldwin takes on the newly created position immediately and reports to Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, Elisa Steele.

Elisa Steele

Baldwin will oversee the company’s global brand efforts, and is responsible for developing and carrying out Yahoo’s brand marketing including brand management, corporate messaging, along with integrated marketing and advertising.

"One of Yahoo!’s greatest assets is its brand," said Steele. "Our integrated, global approach is critical to our success and we have a deep business commitment to fulfill our promise to our users, customers and partners.

"Penny is uniquely qualified to lead the effort and her leadership, experiences, knowledge and skills are excellent additions to the Yahoo! marketing team."

She brings with her 20 years of global brand strategy development and most recently was a managing partner of Young & Rubicam, where she was responsible for leading the efforts of large global teams across industries.

Her experiences span technology, retail, packaged goods, finance, travel, gaming, wireless communications, entertainment and sports marketing.

"This is a seminal moment for the Yahoo! brand and for the business overall," said Baldwin.

Yahoo Getting Rid of Maven Video Business

In February, 2008, Yahoo acquired Maven Networks for $160 million. Maven is a supplier of online video players and video advertising tools.

A year and a half later, Yahoo is already ditching it. The company has said that it is planning to "wind down its customer base."

"This decision will allow us to focus our resources on the continued improvement of our core video offerings, such as enhancing the consumer video experience on Yahoo!," the company said in a statement. "Since Q4 2008, we have closed or announced our intention to close, nearly twenty Yahoo! services– such as Yahoo! 360, GeoCities, My Web and Yahoo! Briefcase. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with people who use our products in the months ahead."

Maven has been integrated into both Yahoo’s video player and the Yahoo video advertising platform. It is unclear what will be used as an alternative at this point.

Yahoo’s video ad products include in-player video advertising (pre- and post-roll), In-banner video advertising, and original video content sponsorships. They also offer opportunities for publishers.

The company says that while video initiatives are still a priority for its consumer and advertising experiences, they are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others.

Other video-related products that Yahoo has parted with include Y!Live and Jumpcut.

Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Directories and Ranking

As you may know, Google’s Matt Cutts frequently answers questions from Google users on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. There are a couple recent ones in which he addresses questions about directories and how they contribute to a site’s rankings.

The first question is:

Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW (Best of the Web) as sources of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sells links?

When Google looks at whether or not a directory is useful to users, Google looks at: 

- What is the value-add?

- Do they go out and find entries on their own or do they only wait for people to come to them?

- How much do they charge?

- What is the editorial service that’s being charged?

"If a directory takes $50 and every single person who ever applies in the directory automatically gets in for that $50, there’s not as much editorial oversight as something like the Yahoo! Directory, where people do get rejected,"  says Cutts. "So if there is no editorial value-add there, then that is much closer to paid links."

The second question is:

We sell a software product, and there are 100s of software download directories on the web of varying quality. Could submitting our product to all of them hurt our rankings or domain trust/authority?

Answering this question, Cutts makes it clear that they are only talking about a software product ( .exe file), and not a website. "If it’s only a software product, then I wouldn’t really worry about it," he says. It wouldn’t hurt your website to have a link from those directories, he says.

If the directories are low quality, Google tries not to score them highly, but it doesn’t hurt to have your software listed in them.

Yahoo Site Re-Design Coming In Fall

After years of poor performances and publicity turmoil, the powers that be at Yahoo! are embarking on one of the company’s most import brand overhauls.

Yahoo! already has a homepage redesign looming, which is scheduled for launch in Fall this year. The redesign was delayed by Carol Bartz back January when she took over the reigns. Perhaps she knew then what we’re starting to see unfold.

Kara Swisher, author of the BoomTown blog on All Things Digital, quizzed Carol about the rebrand plans at the D: All Things Digital conference back in May, and this is what she had to say:

The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it…We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, ‘Thank God, Yahoo’s back.’

There has been endless pressure on Yahoo! over the past few years with significant market share lost to Google and public perception of the company at an all time low.

To make matters worse, last month saw the big unveil of Bing, Microsoft’s re-emergence into the space. And with a shiny new brand and some new tech under the hood, Microsoft has reclaimed some of its lost lustre.

So will Yahoo! be able to emulate the success of its foe with a relaunch of the Yahoo! brand.

It’s always difficult to predict the real impact of a rebrand, but I’m sceptical it’ll have the long term benefits they’ll be hoping for. With out real substance (innovation, improved performance etc) – the bells and whistles will only impress for so long.

That said, the marketer in me is keen to where they take the brand. Will the infamous yodel remain, or will they start a fresh? Who knows, but my money is on the Yodel being laid to rest!

Well until we see the results of this major rebrand, here’s one of the old Yahoo! adverts. If you want to see more – visit Kara’s Boom Town blog.

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Bartz: Yahoo Has Execution Problem

At Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting, Chief Executive Carl Bartz said the company had "nothing to say" about any potential deal with Microsoft and asked investors to be patient as she works to overhaul the company.

"If we ever have a deal with Microsoft, it will be announced publicly and until we do, we have nothing to say," said Bartz said at the meeting in Santa Clara, Calif.

Carol Bartz

Both Yahoo and Microsoft have talked about a possible deal of some sort since last year when Yahoo rejected a $45 billion acquisition bid from Microsoft.

Bartz said comparisons between Yahoo and Google should stop because the two companies have different business models. "Please, this direct comparison model to Google is not fair and is frankly not relevant," she said.

She also said that Yahoo did not have a "vision problem" but that it did have an "execution problem," which it was working on fixing.

Bartz repeated her plan to update Yahoo’s main properties, including its homepage and mail service. She said Yahoo was working on allowing users to customize more services to focus on things they are interested in. Yahoo is also evaluating other existing products to "shut down, repair or outsource."

When asked about Yahoo doing more to promote human rights in China and fight censorship, Bartz said the company has worked hard on those issues.

"I’m going to go real simple," she said. "Yahoo was not incorporated to fix China."