Yahoo Inc. is reorganizing its management structure with the addition of a new division called Global Partner Solutions, which will be responsible for generating a great deal of the company’s revenue.
DM News obtained an e-mail that Yahoo’s president, Susan L. Decker, sent out to all Yahoo employees explaining what this news means.
“I would like to tell you about a number of organizational changes that will help us achieve our goals to better serve our customers, accelerate the speed of making fast, smart decisions, and create cleaner lines of accountability across key leaders,” Decker wrote.
“Building on the success that we have had in aligning our sales and distribution organizations around customers, rather than around advertising products like search and display, the two major changes we are announcing today are designed to take this to a higher level,” Decker’s e-mail said. “They will also better align our resources and priorities focused on building key audiences.”
Global Partner Solutions will be led by Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of local markets, commerce division and Yahoo Publisher Network. She is the former digital head of Knight Ridder. The division is designed to maximize Yahoo’s product offerings on and off the Yahoo network.
“We are placing responsibility for all of our æpartners’ – advertisers, agencies, resellers, publishers, ad networks, developers, or others – in a new division called, Global Partner Solutions” Adam Grossberg, a media relations representative at Yahoo, told DM News in an e-mail. “This new division is intended to bring advertising sales, the online channel, Yahoo Publisher Network, corporate partnerships, and HotJobs together under one leader.”
The group formerly known as local markets and commerce (shopping, travel, autos, real estate, personals and local) is moving to the Yahoo Network Division under its current VP, Jeff Weiner.
Business development deals for mobile and content will continue to be led by Connected Life and the Yahoo Network Division, respectively, and will work in close coordination with GPS.
“Global Partner Solutions will be responsible for segmenting the business needs of our partners into actionable groups, understanding the needs of these segments and our ability to meet these needs, developing holistic business strategies to delight and surprise these segments, and executing on these strategies,” Decker wrote in the e-mail to Yahoo staff.
Yahoo will now be able to much more quickly identify and secure the ad inventory that best meets its advertisers’ objectives and partner with advertisers that best meet the publishing partners’ objectives.
“Hilary is a strong executive with a tremendous track record of success – most recently in building the Yahoo Publisher Network and spearheading the Newspaper Consortium deal – and I believe she is ideally suited to lead this effort,” Decker said.
Reporting to Shneider will be David Karnstedt, senior vice president of North American sales; Jacki Kelley, vice president of sales strategy; Dan Foehner, vice president of worldwide sales operations; Mark Rabe, vice president of cross border sales; Rich Riley, senior vice president at the online channel division; Todd Teresi, senior vice president of Yahoo Publisher Network; Jim Schinella, senior vice president of corporate partnerships; and Jeff Kinder, senior vice president of HotJobs.
Yahoo plans to combine its search and display ad sales teams and communicate the benefits of more integrated capabilities to major clients. This integration is now well underway, according to Decker’s e-mail.
EVP of global sales, Gregory Coleman, is leaving Yahoo to pursue other opportunities.
“We are fortunate that he will continue to assist us in this transition through February, closely advising the team,” Decker said. “We deeply appreciate Greg’s contributions to Yahoo over the past six and a half years, a period in which our advertising revenues have increased from $600 million a year to more than $6 billion, with substantial growth not only in the United States but in Europe, Asia and key emerging markets around the world.”
Yahoo is also moving Cammie Dunaway, CMO, and her customer experience organization to report to Decker.
Grossberg said that Yahoo does not expect any layoffs due to these consolidations.
“We will continue to invest in our sales organization in order to attract and maintain the best talent, as underscored by recent hires from major brands, which include our competitors,” Grossberg said. “In fact, we expect our team’s headcount to be greater at the close of 2007 than at the beginning of the year.”
