Yahoo Revs Up 11%, Mayer Puts Focus On Search, Mobile

Marissa-MayerYahoo's revenue from search, minus traffic acquisition costs, rose 11% to $414 million in Q3 2012 compared with the year-ago quarter. Revenue from display ads rose 1% to $506 million, respectively. The Q3 2012 financial results released Monday marketed the first full quarter headed by former Google executive and now Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

Calling Yahoo "iconic," an in-control Mayer said the company will focus on core components such as search, display, mail, mobile, news, content and the Yahoo home page. She said employees will work to rebuild the Internet company to support user experiences and daily consumer habits, such as mail and search.

Yahoo will continue to work with Bing for now -- although the search partner, which comes up for review in May, delivers less than perfect results.

Mayer said changes such as free food for all employees continue to improve morale and the culture. Advertisers and consumers can expect Yahoo to integrate search across all its own sites and hire more engineers that should improve Yahoo's position in mobile.

She believes the company can excel in mobile advertising and content without a proprietary operating system because it will allow the company to offer consistent products and services across Android and iOS.

Advertisers and brands should not expect a heavy investment in local. It requires too great an investment, she said. "I'm bullish on both search and display, but given the trend toward audience-based buying in advertising, the display opportunity is particularly compelling," she said.

Aside from audience-based buying, Mayer named programmatic as a focus. Expect small company acquisitions in the future, from around $100 million.

In display, Yahoo consistently lost market share since 2008, when it took in 18.4% of all U.S. display ad revenue, according to eMarketer. The analyst firm estimates Yahoo will hold about 9.3% share of U.S. display advertising revenue this year, down from 11% last year. Google will top the market with a 15.4% share for U.S. display.

Overall, Yahoo holds just an 8.4% share of all U.S. digital ad revenue -- down from 9.6% last year, according to eMarketer.

Next story loading loading..