MediaFile

Yahoo’s not-so-secret reorganization got its official nod today, with three new divisions created to centralize operations and report to Sue Decker.
    
Jerry Yang still stars as Chief Executive in the company’s statement, giving his blessing to moves he said will accelerate Yahoo’s ability to make money off the web.
    
Decker herself told us that the new organizational structure reflects absolutely no change to her status or power within the organization: “I am responsible for the business and Ari (CTO Ari Balogh) is responsible for the technology and engineering.”

Wall Street, however, thinks Sue may be too modest in her self-assessment. We spoke to several analysts who stressed her rise to prominence and the long-held assumption (at least since last June, when Yang took over from Terry Semel) that Decker was still being groomed for CEO-dom.
    
Here’s what some of them said:

Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein:
“It begs the question, what is Jerry Yang doing? … It looks like there has been a significant shift in power towards Ms. Decker. Clearly if there are three new groups reporting to her that would suggest to us that she’s taking a larger role in operations.”
   
“It’s hard to see what significant difference it’s going to make. Certainly previous reorganizations haven’t achieved a great deal. Reorganizations at most large Internet companies don’t seem to achieve very much, so we’re not terribly optimistic.”
    
Colin Gillis of Canaccord Adams:
“Either way that’s not the change that certain investors were seeking …We certainly see Sue taking an increasingly active role in the company and Jerry probably likes his Chief Yahoo title after what’s been a very grueling year.”
 
“Our take is that this reorganization is driven by Sue. Sue’s got to have a little bit of time here. If this reorganization can get pulled off without disrupting the business momentum (i.e. Yahoo doesn’t miss expectations or lower forecasts) … then points to her for that and that would be a success.”

What remains to be seen is whether investors will still rally to Decker even in the event Yang steps aside, or will her role in keeping Microsoft at bay be hard forgotten by shareholders who were hungry for a deal?

(Photo of Decker: Reuters)

With Yahoo shares trading just above $20, investors must be desperate for any sign that buyout talks with Microsoft could be resuscitated. It’s been relatively quiet since Yahoo struck the Google ad deal — with nary a peep from the usually loquacious activist investor Carl Icahn, who has been blogging about CEO pay but keeping silent on where he will take his Yahoo proxy battle.

So it’s no surprise that Yahoo shares jumped as much as 15 percent on Tuesday after TechCrunch reported that Microsoft and Yahoo are back in takeover talks, citing multiple sources at both companies.

But investors’ hopes were short-lived with CNBC quickly knocking down that rumor, saying its source thinks there are no new negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo.

If it wasn’t sufficiently clear that Ford is paying for those Mustangs on TV, or who’s supplying all that Coca-Cola to the American Idol judges, the Federal Communications Commission may make everyone involved in this obfuscation ‘fess up.
    
According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is expected to launch a formal proceeding this week to consider rules for proper disclosure of what the industry calls product placement: the frequently annoying inclusion of brand names into scripts for TV shows, movies and, according to some, novels.
    
Some ideas under consideration include requiring TV shows to put up a notice similar to the ones used by political candidates in their campaign ads. The Journal says U.S. advertisers, who are already shelling out several billion dollars a year on these stealth ads, are opposed to the idea.
    
We can’t help but question whether such notices would effectively become a second plug for a product, at least in the minds of consumers. Or does the explicitness of it all reduce any potential “cool” factor of having your vacuum cleaner featured in a Saturday Night Live skit? 

Keep an eye on:

Beatles representatives are in talks with both Activision and MTV Games to create a Beatles-themed video game in a move that could pave the way for a broader licensing of the Fab Four’s catalogue. (Financial Times) MySpace is STILL worth more than Facebook, according to a TechCrunch analysis. Oh, and even more executives have defected from Yahoo than even they originally thought. (TechCrunch)

Things have gotten tense over at Live Nation. An internal feud at the concert promoter could end with Chairman Michael Cohl resigning.

The Wall Street Journal says Cohl is currently negotiating his resignation, having fought with Chief Executive Michael Rapino for weeks over so-called “360 deals.” In such deals, Live Nation gives superstars hefty upfront payments in exchange for financial rights in nearly all their business. Think Madonna and U2 and Jay-Z.

It seems, according to the reports, fairly simple: Cohl wants to sign more of these deals and Rapino wants the pace of these signings to slow; the board tells them to work out their differences; Cohl heads out the door.

There was much written in the sports pages (and in some cases the business pages) about Tiger Woods’ decision to miss the rest of the golf season and undergo reconstructive knee surgery.  

His absence is a big deal for sports fans – not to mention marketers and TV networks. After all, he is the biggest American sports machine since Michael Jordan.   

 ”Much like Michael Jordan did (Woods) has the power of drawing in the more casual viewer or participant to the sport,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Thomas Shaw told Reuters. “He has the ability of driving some participation. It gets people excited to get out and dust off the clubs and play some.”

Finally, some movement.

It seems that the head of U.S. Federal Communications Commission Kevin Martin will support Sirius Satellite Radio’s proposed purchase of rival XM Satellite Radio.

The Washington Post and others are reporting that Martin decided to support the deal after the companies agreed to concessions intended to prevent the new company from raising prices or stifling competition among radio makers.

A decision has been a long time coming. Seventeen months ago the two companies announced they would merge, bringing entertainers such as Oprah Winfrey and shock jock Howard Stern under the same banner. The Justice Department approved the deal in March, but the companies are still waiting for the FCC.

Back in May, we reported that Google was in the driver’s seat when it came to Microsoft and Yahoo’s on-again, off-again merger talks. Well, Thursday’s news suggests that Google has crossed the finish line — in first place.

Yahoo turned down what sources said was a $35/share offer from Microsoft for a 16 percent equity stake, choosing instead to seal a search advertising deal with Google for up to 10 years.

While Yahoo estimated a $250 million to $450 million boost to cash flow in the first year of the Google deal, and said the annual revenue opportunity was $800 million, Wall Street was skeptical.

When Microsoft first said it was ending talks to buy Yahoo, many people thought, “well, that’s the end of it.” Zombie movie fans, on the other hand, know that a dead body can get up and walk again. And walk again it did!

But you have to believe The New York Times when it says you can lay the corpse to rest. And that’s just what the Times Dealbook said about Yahoo and Microsoft on Thursday evening:

The talks are dead. Really, this time they are dead. Yahoo is preparing to announce that it has ended its talks with Microsoft over a search-related deal as well as the sale of the entire company, people involved in the discussions said. Yahoo is expected to move forward with an advertising pact with Google as early as today, these people said. How did we get to this point?

 The heat is definitely on at Yahoo.

As though it weren’t under enough pressure, the board now has Carl Icahn warning them that they will be held personally liable for approving a controversial employee severance plan.

Oh, and shareholders suing the company now want a speedy trial related to failed merger talks between Yahoo and Microsoft, saying they would like to get to court before the company’s August 1 annual meeting.

Here’s the upshot of the fight over the severance plan: Shareholders suing the company argue that the board is free  to reorganize Yahoo’s work force as it sees fit without fear of triggering the severance benefits.

This is not an entry about Microsoft. It is an entry about Yahoo’s wagon-load of new ad partnerships announced today and what we learned about the future of online advertising exchanges. Basically, Yahoo executives told us they are trying to build a more open, more social Internet strategy vis a vis consumers and advertisers.

On the consumer side, expect Yahoo to rewire its sites, email and instant messaging so that users can manage information about themselves and their friends in a single place. 
    
At a lunch with reporters after speaking at the Advertising 2.0 conference, Yahoo President Sue Decker said those changes would become apparent late this year and early next year.
    
For advertisers, some of the new partnerships announced on Wednesday include important tie-ins to Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange, where online ad space can be bought and sold more efficiently, based on the laws of supply and demand in force everywhere else.
 
The ideas are part of a bigger shift away from expecting viewers to come to a given site, toward extending your services out to wherever your users may be.
 
“It feels like the industry is ripe right now for contributing to a larger ecosystem,” Decker said.
 
Right Media’s Mike Walrath put it diplomatically, suggesting the days of publishers or other parties who try to control their own ad pricing in an open market could be numbered.
    
“If your business is based on inefficiency, and as the market becomes more efficient … some models will strengthen,” he said.

Media agency Havas Digital is participating in one of the new deals, agreeing to build a proprietary ad trading platform based on Yahoo’s technology. Havas Digital CEO Don Epperson told us in an interview that Havas had been working with Yahoo on this for nearly 9 months, and called Yahoo’s attitude refreshing.