• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 8, 2022

Running a search engine and running Tinder is 90% a product problem -- and the solution is content, said Jim Lanzone, Yahoo CEO, adding: “The remaining 10% relates to dating.”

It's content that is available to more than 900 million global users monthly across Yahoo’s network of companies, giving it a unique look into first-party data through content, as well as products like search, connected television (CTV) and email.

Lanzone stepped into the role of CEO at Yahoo in September 2021 from Tinder, where he also served as CEO. On Tuesday, he sat down with Randall Rothenberg, executive chair at the IAB, at the annual leadership summit to talk about the future of the company and the industry.

Yahoo has in many categories the most precious thing -- a top-of-the-funnel position, Lanzone said. The areas range from search to fantasy sports, which he called the “gateway drug to getting into deeper forms of betting.” He said the company is “actively” looking into things like Web3 and cryptocurrency.

Search is the best training ground for internet products, Lanzone said. Those products include ones connected to data privacy.

Ivan Markman, chief business officer at Yahoo, on Monday told Search & Performance Marketing Daily that the company has access to billions of signals that come from all types of devices like CTV and mobile.

These signals focus on commerce to sports and finance, and more. The time of day, location and weather are all considered when creating models, as well as using first-party data from Yahoo ConnectID, the company’s cookieless solution to privacy ad targeting similar to Google Topics.

Markman said Yahoo’s demand-side platform (DSP) has seen 64% growth in the past year. The supply-side platform grew 40%. An exclusive partnership with Vizio gives Yahoo access to data that enables it to target, plan and measure CTV more efficiently. The partnership was formed when Yahoo was called Verizon Media.

Then in November 2021, Yahoo partnered with Peacock, NBCUniversal’s premium streaming service.

Markman also talked about connecting the dots through audience indexing where advertisers can link data to more than the signals that come from mobile and CTV, such as QR codes.

Artificial intelligence will also support targeting. "If you have billions of signals not tied to an identifier, no cookies or IDFA," he said, "you can use AI to create intent segments. ... With other signals using AI you can better connect to attribution without needing an identifier."