Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
My view is that if Yahoo can win over entrepreneurs, it will help drive innovation. If they innovate, that will help win over consumers. You know what agencies flock to? Innovative companies that consumers flock to.
— Jeff Lanctot, chief media officer, Razorfish in “As ‘Tech’ Company, Yahoo Is Giving Ad Agencies A New Look: The Cold Shoulder.” (AdAge)
The age-old dilemma for all Silicon Valley tech companies is whether they’re really media companies. Google went through this debate ad nauseam in its early days. The challenge is these companies are both: They’re tech companies with media business models. Yahoo made the decisive turn to focus on its tech side when it passed over Ross Levinsohn for Marissa Mayer, a virtual unknown to Madison Avenue. Lanctot crystallizes why this tech-company-or-media-company debate is a false one. Ad buyers follow audiences. Yahoo’s relevance depends on that, whether it attracts that audience through hot mobile tech or through great content.
More in Marketing
‘Nobody’s asking the question’: WPP’s biggest restructure in years means nothing until CMOs say it does
WPP declared itself transformed. CMOs will decide if that’s true.
Why a Gen Alpha–focused skin-care brand is giving equity to teen creators
Brands are looking for new ways to build relationships that last, and go deeper than a hashtag-sponsored post.
Pitch deck: How ChatGPT ads are being sold to Criteo advertisers
OpenAI has the ad inventory. Criteo has relationships with advertisers. Here’s how they’re using them.