Is Yahoo`s New CEO Up to the Challenge? - Yahoo's Other Challenges
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Bartz faces a company that has suffered through layoffs, downsizing, at least one brain drain, some major restructuring, and serious morale issues. Its stockholders recently revolted. It has had two CEOs in succession that did not improve its competitiveness. She was certainly correct when she said that the company could use a little management. What else could it use?
Bartz is keeping mum about her own plans for the moment. She is said to be talking with Yahoo employees; perhaps she needs a little breathing room herself before deciding to set anything in motion. Naturally, this hasn't kept analysts and other observers from playing “armchair CEO.” Klaassen offered some interesting advice.
Not only should Bartz not sell search; she should make the most of it as far as finding synergies with its portal and advertising. “Yahoo has great sports and finance sites, for example. It should start marketing its search users coming through the vertical sites as highly valuable, pre-qualified searchers,” Klaassen suggested.
That's just a start. Imagine what Yahoo could do if it combined its behavioral and registration data with search queries. Matt Naeger, executive VP of operations search marketing firm Impaqt, speculated on the effect. “Would I pay more for someone who's visited a review site in my category in [the] last 30 days? I'd be willing to pay more for that, and Yahoo would have more of that info than any of its competitors.”
The tricky part about this approach would be to come up with a way to use it that doesn't look like an invasion of privacy. Still, I can't see Yahoo just sitting on this big of a competitive advantage. It's not the only thing the venerable search engine can do to get out of its current crisis, but it could be a step on the road to recovery. Now if Bartz could just deal with the low morale, low stock prices, general chaos, and more...it's a tall order to ask of anyone. The coming months will reveal whether Carol Bartz is up to it.
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