25 June 2007

Yahoo! in advertising shake-up

Internet search engine giant Yahoo! has announced plans to merge two of its main advertising departments under senior executive David Karnstedt, in a bid to help revive the business.

The move comes after the company's boss, Terry Semel, quit earlier this month following poor trading results, leaving executives to attempt a merger of its display and web search advertising operations to make amends.

Veteran advertising sales executive Wenda Harris-Millard has also left the company, with new Yahoo! president Susan Decker making sweeping changes to reflect consumer demands.

Ms Harris-Millard is set to join Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, in a move that is "not a comment" on the company's recent problems, but rather her own career choice.

A move towards more video-based advertisements is likely, although research shows campaigns using both types of adverts - web search and display ads - are in demand from customers.

"When combined, the two organisations will deliver profoundly better results than when delivered separately," said Gregory Coleman, executive vice president of global sales.

Critics argue that Yahoo!, who has continued to lose ground to rival Google, has been slow to adapt to the changes in the online search engine market.

Yahoo! suffered a sharp fall in profits in the first three months of 2007, admitting that poorly performing search adverts would also affect second quarter figures.

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