Yahoo scraps mail ads in emerging markets
Getting rid of advertisements may not sound like a recipe to grow a Web business, but it’s one tack Yahoo is taking under new CEO Carol Bartz.
At a two-day staff powwow last week, Yahoo management decided to stop serving ads on its popular Yahoo Mail product in certain emerging markets in order to improve the experience for people with slow Internet connections.
The decision, which Bartz relayed to employees in her weekly memo last week, is intended to stem a loss of market share that Yahoo Mail believes it is experiencing in certain emerging market countries.
Yahoo’s Bartz sees growth abroad – memo
Since Carol Bartz took over as Yahoo CEO last month, analysts and investors have busily speculated about her still undefined strategy to mend the Internet company.
Bartz, the former chief executive of electronic design software firm Autodesk, has offered few clues about her thinking,
In a memo to Yahoo employees last Friday, Bartz tipped her hand about one area she is bullish about: emerging markets.
“While I was still at Autodesk, I traveled extensively through these emerging markets and am a strong, strong believer in the opportunities that are out there,” Bartz wrote.
“Sure, there might be an economic slowdown,” she continued. “but that’s where the largest percentage of internet growth is going to be and we are going to play!”
Bartz recently met with Keith Nilsson, the head of Yahoo’s emerging markets group, in keeping with her efforts to meet with various managers and to learn about the company’s various operations.
Yahoo has had a research and development group in India for several years and the company has a strong presence throughout Asia. But Yahoo has plenty of room to grow overseas. In the fourth quarter, roughly 26 percent of its total revenue came from international operations, compared to the 50 percent at Google.
I remember years ago when I LOVED yahoo email since it was free and worked with my old browser. Then they started putting on their crazy ads with LARGE MOVING pictures of “beautiful” women, cars, etc. Because of all the ads, it would take me 5 webpages just to be able to get to read my email as well as give me a huge eyesore as well as waste my time, energy, time, and bandwidth on slow dialup!!! I ran away SO FAST and went into the WONDERFUL ARMS OF FASTMAIL (I don’t like advertising just any service, but fastmail is one of a kind excellent) who does AWESOME service FOR FREE VS. the mentality of yahoo who just wants to use you. I’d find my yahoo email spammed with ads from businesses I never dealt with just because yahoo was able to track me with their search engine PLUS their email. They were so bad they even interefered in your privacy. They’d even LOOK at your email to see what you were interested in and serve you ads from businesses related to your email info. These days, yahoo doesn’t have so many ads but I only use them as a temporary measure for meaningless stuff. They’re NEVER going to be my DEFAULT email again for communication with friends/family/business!! That’s for sure!!