Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer Has Run Out of Time for a Turnaround

That's the first thing I thought when I heard the company might be up for sale.

At the New York Times:

Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer has run out of time for a turnaround.

After three years, it’s clear that neither the chief executive, nor maybe any potential replacement, can save the flailing Internet company. The board’s job should be to determine the best way for tidying up the company’s affairs. Ms. Mayer’s best legacy could turn out to be that she got a good price for Yahoo’s core business.

Ms. Mayer has tried to drum up excitement by investing and buying smaller firms in mobile, video and social technologies. That hasn’t worked. Yahoo is expected to earn less than half as much as it did in 2012. The future doesn’t look any brighter, as companies cut into its advertising revenue with software that blocks online ads.

It’s doubtful that any other executive could do better. After all, Yahoo has had six bosses over the last decade, and none were able to figure out how to turn things around. History shows that struggling tech companies rarely regain momentum. Top engineers flee, new technologies and rivals are ignored and sclerosis sets in.

Given that reality, it might be futile for the board to try to replace Ms. Mayer. Instructing her to dismember the company might be the best approach and a way for her to salvage her reputation...

Ouch. That's harsh.

Still more at that top link.

Yahoo Aims to More Deftly Blend Ads With Content

I think we should start a Marissa Meyer termination countdown. I can't remember any good news about Yahoo since she took over as CEO.

In any case, at NYT:

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — To Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, fashion magazines like Vogue and InStyle have achieved the holy grail of advertising.

“The ads in those magazines are as interesting as the photo shoots and the articles,” she said in an interview last week at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “I miss the ads when they are not there. I feel less fulfilled.”

This year, her goal is to start making the ads on Yahoo just as compelling and just as integrated with the news and information people seek on her company’s websites and mobile applications.

One early example: Recipes from Knorr, the soup brand owned by Unilever, are sprinkled around regular articles from Yahoo writers, food magazines and blogs on Yahoo Food, the digital magazine the company started about six weeks ago.

Ms. Mayer, who oversaw Google’s signature search products for several years, also hopes to develop new search tools and ads geared to mobile users — the company’s first steps to innovate in its original business since 2010, when it began a 10-year deal to outsource search to Microsoft.

“We’re not sure that a list of links that people have to pick through is the right experience on the phone, and we’re going to start to play with context, applications, other ways to address those search needs,” she said.

Better, more useful ads would certainly make Yahoo’s 800 million monthly users and its legions of advertisers happier all around.

But for Yahoo, much more is at stake. New ad formats that go beyond the company’s traditional banner and search ads are its best hope of finding fresh sources of revenue, which it badly needs after years of decline.

Yeah, badly.

See AdAge, "Yahoo Slips Behind Google, Facebook and Even Microsoft In Online Ad Share."