Who would want to be Jerry Yang now?

22-10-2008

by Ralph Averbuch

Who would want to be in Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's shoes right now? Credit Crunch equals a squeeze on ad spend and that became clear with Yahoo's announcement of a 64 percent profits drop in the third quarter. Despite some great applications such as Flickr and Yahoo Mail, the company is inescapably an also-ran in the marketplace; it's just a question of how much blood will be spilt when cuts, alleged to be some 10 percent or around 1,500 people, are made. It's looking like Yang should have sold up to Microsoft when the offer was on the table. Of course, chances are the EU would have killed any such deal at birth over monopoly fears. But the irony is that Google, thanks to its existing dominance, is likely to benefit from any consolidation of online ad spend. With less money to go round media buyers will want to tick off Google first for any money they do have and only then consider other websites and sector specific specialists thereafter. Of course, any website which seeks to make the majority of its revenue from advertising is about to find that Jerry Yang isn't the only one feeling the pain.