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Microsoft To Hulu: No Thanks
CHART OF THE DAY: Yahoo’s Revenue Since Carol Bartz Took Over
During Yahoo’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Carol Bartz blamed the quarter’s disappointing display ad revenues on a sales force going through a re-org.
“We underestimated how much the changes would leave to turnover,” she said.
“We didn’t have enough sales people in front of the big clients.”
According to a series of agency buyers quoted in a story by Digiday, Bartz is understating the problem – massively.
Digiday reports: “For some agencies, Yahoo has essentially disappeared when it comes to staffing, attentiveness and the simple ability to handle significant dollar volume.”
Here are the most damaging quotes from Yahoo’s ad-buying clients:
- “If I had to get something big done, I literally wouldn’t know who to call right now.”
- “Yahoo has dropped off the map regarding senior attention as far as I can see. They still do a lot with the teams and maintain strong relationships with certain accounts, but I have asked multiple times to have a holding company-dedicated manager from their side to develop long-term strategic partnerships and I have gotten nothing from them.”
- “At the top level, we are the ones who are more often reaching out to Yahoo. And then every time we do there is another cast of characters two months later. They’re missing opportunities because of this.”
- “They need to culturally adjust to not being in as dominant position as they have been. The buzz of Yahoo for many years made them an easy sell. Now the buzz on them has gone sour, but you still have a bureaucracy that makes them less flexible and more expensive.”
That last quote gives you a pretty good sense why some people at Yahoo are so eager to buy Hulu – if only they could afford it.