Yahoo! Chief Hints at Company’s Digital Marketing Plans

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By John Cantwell

As has been widely reported today, Yahoo! officially rejected Microsoft’s initial takeover bid of $42 billion, saying it undervalues Yahoo!

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang detailed the reasons behind Yahoo! managements’ decision in a company-wide email that was subsequently published in The Wall Street Journal. He points out several facts and initiatives that should be of interest to digital marketers:

• Yang states that the global online ad market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010
• Yahoo! ranks #1 in overall time spent on sites
• Yang hints at increased implementation of the company’s open platform technologies
• The Yahoo! newspaper consortium (warning: old press release) has expanded from 264 newspapers to more than 600 newspapers in seven months
• Yahoo! has made significant investments in Web properties in China and Japan

Now, obviously, a lot of this is sales-speak meant to justify the company’s position and generate new interest in Yahoo! Still, with Google’s dominance in ad space, it’s been easy to overlook Yahoo! recently. It’ll be interesting to see what this plucky underdog, valued at a mere $42 billion, has up its sleeve.

In other Yahoo!/marketing-related news:

• Henry Blodget thinks Microsoft made a “colossal strategic mistake” by thinking it needs to get into advertising