Yahoo's partnership with a toolbar provider has led to questionable affiliate links showing up in the latest version of the Yahoo Toolbar for both Firefox and IE. How questionable? In one case, an affiliate was redirecting traffic from Ticketmaster.com to a competing online ticket seller. In other cases, it's unclear if the websites that a user visits are aware that Yahoo is showing affiliate coupons when the page loads. The coupons are visible to all U.S. users of the Yahoo toolbar that have installed or upgraded to the current toolbar version. The Coupons app is currently turned on by [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Channel: Content Marketing | Features & Analysis | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Toolbar

In case you hadn’t noticed, Yahoo ranks number one for “Yahoo sucks.” Everyone in the digital marketing business knows it sucks, and efforts to turn the place into Google have yet to achieve fruition. Sure, the stock got a bump when Marissa came in, but that’s largely due to her status as one of the original Googlers. Home page redesign and human resource parlor tricks like that free lunch thing aside, Yahoo’s corporate culture is akin to the Balboa camp right after Mr. T pounded the stallion into submission in Rocky 3. Nothing To See Here They need to turn this ship around a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column | Yahoo: Business Issues

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s has served up its annual and comprehensive “State of the News Media" report. It offers a mostly pessimistic assessment of the condition and trajectory of various news media in the US today. In perhaps its most striking finding, the report shows how declining revenues leading to repeated cost-cutting have hurt readership and audience loyalty. Based on survey data, the State of the News Media argues that slipping quality and diminished coverage have alienated large numbers of people who've abandoned news publications o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Facebook: Statistics | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter: Statistics | Yahoo: News

The benefits and drawbacks of working from home -- or having employees working from home -- has been a big topic of discussion in the online advertising and publishing worlds, ever since new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told the company's telecommuters to come into an office or say bye bye to their jobs. One contrary point of view came from an interesting and influential voice this week -- WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg, who was interviewed by AllThingsD's Kara Swisher at SXSW Interactive. "Why are so many companies set into this factory model?" Mullenweg asked. "Find the best pe [...]

Related Topics: Blogging | Channel: Content Marketing | Yahoo: Business Issues

Kara Swisher reports that Yahoo has made a decision to require all their employees to work within a Yahoo office. So for all those hundreds of work-at-home employees, you either start figuring out how you will get to work every day or find a new job. The internal memo explains that Yahoo is making this change to increase the speed and quality of the work. Yahoo said that "speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home." Yahoo goes on to explain that working side-by-side with your fellow Yahoo employees fosters communication and collaboration which can lead to new ideas, be [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

We've known for quite some time that Yahoo was preparing to relaunch its homepage. We saw early evidence several months ago in screenshots and even more recently "in the wild." But today, the "new Yahoo" is officially starting its rollout in the US. Overall, the new homepage has an updated but similar look, with a range of visual and structural changes. For comparison, here is an image of the "old" Yahoo homepage, which is still live for most people: Below is the new homepage (screenshot provided by Yahoo). The colors, the fonts, the icons and other elements of the page are slightly [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile | Yahoo: News

Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, who seems to have an unlimited supply of moles and sources within Yahoo, is reporting that she's been told by someone inside the company that Yahoo's mobile ad revenues are only $125 million annually -- with most of that coming from search. According to Swisher: [D]irect mobile revenue hovers only around $125 million annually, mostly from search revenue on mobile devices. While users are consuming lots of Yahoo Web pages on their phones, which could technically boost the sales numbers higher, rendering most desktop-created ads on mobile is not the same thing as [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Flickr | Yahoo: Mobile

A bug at Flickr caused some people to have their private photos opened to public view over the past three weeks. Flickr said the bug only impacted a small number of users and only photos uploaded from April to December 2012. Flickr Quietly Tells Users Flickr made no post about this on its blog. Instead, yesterday, as one of the impacted users, Flickr sent me an email to politely let me know that hundreds of my private photos were opened to the public for a 20-day period recently. The email said Flickr had: Identified a software bug that may have changed the view setting on some of your phot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Legal: Privacy | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

Yahoo has announced that it will be working with Google. No, not on search-triggered advertising, Bing is still Yahoo's exclusive partner there; but, Google will non-exclusively provide contextual ads that will appear throughout Yahoo's properties and certain co-branded sites. The ads will come through AdSense for Content, with mobile ads provided by AdMob. In a blog post announcing the global relationship, Yahoo said, "By adding Google to our list of world-class contextual ads partners, we’ll be able to expand our network, which means we can serve users with ads that are even more meanin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: AdSense | Google: Business Issues | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo announced fourth quarter earnings today under the leadership of Marissa Mayer. This is the first time Yahoo reported a rise in revenue in four years. The revenue was up 2% year-over-year at $1.35 billion for the fourth quarter and $4.99 billion for the 2012 year. Yahoo's profits slipped by 22% year-over-year with $190 million for the quarter. This did, however, beat Wall Street estimates, and Yahoo's stock price is now up almost 4% in after-hours trading. Search revenues were also up year-over-year with $482 million for the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to $465 million for the fo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sat down with Bloomberg TV in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, in a very interesting and far-ranging interview (embedded below), to discuss the future of Internet technology and search. Mayer spoke at length about the future of search, social, mobile and Yahoo's strategy. She also offered her first public comments about Yahoo's positioning and strategy, amid intensifying competition from a range of larger players, including Google, Amazon and Facebook. The Right CEO For Yahoo It's clear from this interview that Mayer was the right choice for the Ya [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

Yahoo has acquired Snip.it, a social content curation site that reminds many of Pinterest. AllThingsD reported earlier today that the purchase was in the works -- with a reported price tag in the mid-teen millions of dollars -- and Yahoo has confirmed it this afternoon via a statement from Mike Kerns, Vice President of Product: "The Snip.it team created an innovative technology that lets people share content in a social and fun way. We're excited to welcome them to Yahoo!, where they will help us build experiences that bring people with shared interests together. Reading and sharing conten [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer may be a little like Michael Jordan on the 1980s Chicago Bulls basketball team. Before they became a championship force in the 90s, Jordan was a star but without the supporting players who would eventually help him win NBA trophies. Mayer has been trying to build her own winning team, poaching a number of colleagues from Google and pruning some existing Yahoo executives in an effort to put her stamp on the company and change its culture. Now, reports TechCrunch, the company is trying to lure back some former Yahoo engineers and executives. Picking up on a tweet fr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Kara Swisher reports Shashi Seth, a top Yahoo executive who ran Yahoo Search for almost three years and more recently was in charge of the Connections Business Unit at Yahoo is no longer at the company. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's CEO, reportedly sent out a memo to the Yahoo team about Shashi Seth departure. Seth posted a message on LinkedIn about this saying: After three years I have come to the incredibly hard decision to move on from Yahoo. I truly enjoyed working with an amazing team, that was passionate, hard working, and truly brilliant. I will miss working with them! Shashi Seth [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

At this point, you may be predictioned out. But, if you can make room for one more post about what mobile marketing holds in store for 2013 (U.S. focus), I promise to make it worth your while. Mobile has started to play a huge role in marketing over the last couple of years, and this year will be no different. In fact, I am going to be so bold as to say that this is the year that mobile finally breaks out and has that hero moment that prognosticators have been talking about for the last 10-12 years. Before I dig into my five predictions though, it is probably worth looking at a little ba [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Check-In Services | Facebook: Mobile | Foursquare | Google: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Twitter: Mobile | Yahoo: Mobile

If you go by my Facebook and Twitter feeds, you'd think Instagram is finished -- users are packing their bags (downloading their photos using services like Instaport) and migrating to other services like Snapchat or even the venerable Flickr. This because the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service announced changes in its terms of service due to take effect in January, with some of those changes designed to allow advertisers access to the audience. Is everyone leaving Instagram before marketers get a chance to engage with them? Not likely. Since this latest Facebook-related-change panic (FR [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Acquisitions | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Instagram | Features & Analysis | Mobile Marketing | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr | Yahoo: Mobile

Yahoo's first two acquisitions in the era of CEO Marissa Mayer weren't big splashy deals as many including me had anticipated; they were modest "acqu-hires" for mobile teams. By the same token Yahoo's launch of new apps for Yahoo Mail and Flickr, yesterday and today, are similar workmanlike updates and upgrades to core Yahoo properties. Yahoo Mail is, from a traffic and monetization perspective, second only in importance to the Yahoo homepage, which is scheduled for a Mayer-inspired refresh as well. In a way it's amazing that there was no iPhone app for Yahoo Mail until yesterday. That' [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

The plaintiff that recently won a $2.7 billion judgment against Yahoo in a Mexican lawsuit is willing to settle the case for less money. Carlos Bazan-Canabal tells Reuters that Ideas Interactivas and its holding company, Worldwide Directories, are willing to listen if Yahoo wants to settle the case. "If we can reach a settlement with an interesting number, we would go for it." The lawsuit came to light last week when Yahoo announced its plan to appeal what would be a significant financial hit. The Reuters article also sheds more light on the issues that initially led to the breach [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: General | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo is planning to appeal a $2.7 billion judgment against it in a lawsuit over a yellow pages listings service in Mexico. The company announced the judgment and its plan to appeal in a short news release this afternoon. Details about the case are vague. Yahoo's statement says that a company called Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas, S.A. de C.V. sued Yahoo and Yahoo Mexico for breach of contract, breach of promise and lost profits related to contracts for a yellow pages listing service. Some reports say that Worldwide Directories is the parent company of Ideas I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: General | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

A couple of weeks ago Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made her first acquisition: Stamped, a mobile recommendations app/site. It turned out to be an "acqu-hire," to help build out Yahoo's mobile product and development team. Stamped itself will be shuttered. Like Stamped, Yahoo is also shuttering its Yahoo Mobile Blog. This is somewhat surprising for a company that is making mobile one of its top priorities -- if not its top priority. Mayer said the following on the Yahoo Q3 earnings call: We haven't effectively optimized our websites, we've underinvested in our mobile front-end development and we [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile