If you were hoping for clues about what Yahoo YHOO +0.44% Chief Executive Marissa Mayer is planning to do with all that post-Alibaba IPO cash, you weren’t going to find it on Thursday when Ms. Mayer sat for a keynote interview at Advertising Week.
In fact, if you were looking for Ms. Mayer to talk about how she planned to turn around Yahoo’s lagging advertising fortunes, or whether Yahoo may end up merging with AOL, you weren’t likely to find those answers either. Nor would you hear her thoughts on an activist investor that is urging the company to make big changes.
The line to see Ms. Mayer snaked up and down the stairs at the TimesCenter in New York. But instead of hearing her touch on any of those matters, they heard the familiar themes: she’s bullish on native ads, Yahoo’s digital magazines, mobile and Web video.
- Bloomberg
Again and again, the ever-optimistic Ms. Mayer used the word “opportunity”to describe the state of affairs at Yahoo. She was never asked what Yahoo might look to acquire with its Alibaba windfall, but said that Yahoo’s investment in the Chinese Internet giant provided a big “opportunity.”
Another word Ms. Mayer kept repeating during the interview was “storytelling,” particularly as she espoused the value of native ads and video.
“I love native advertising,” she said. “I think of advertising as an art form.” One of the things that has held back artful advertising on the Web, Ms. Mayer said, is “the fact that we have ads that don’t necessarily match [our] content or fit into [our Web] experience.” Sounds a lot like she is down on banners. Meanwhile, Ms. Mayer spoke enthusiastically about how, in her mind, consumers love advertising in magazines and on TV, something she’d like to see happen more online.
“The holy grail is when the ads are so good that they actually attract more users [to your sites],” she said. “For us, display is really about brands storytelling, and display 2.0 is video.”
