Yahoo 2009 Annual Report Download - page 17

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 17 of the 2009 Yahoo annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 134

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 110
  • 111
  • 112
  • 113
  • 114
  • 115
  • 116
  • 117
  • 118
  • 119
  • 120
  • 121
  • 122
  • 123
  • 124
  • 125
  • 126
  • 127
  • 128
  • 129
  • 130
  • 131
  • 132
  • 133
  • 134

MARKETING
The Yahoo! brand is one of the most widely recognized in the world. Maintaining and growing the Yahoo! brand
enables us to attract, retain, and more deeply engage users, advertisers, publishers, and developers. We believe a
great brand begins with great products, services, and content. Our marketing teams engage in each step of
product and services development, deployment, and management and content design to understand and shape our
offerings so as better to market them to our communities of potential and existing users. In 2009, we launched a
global brand marketing campaign designed to highlight our commitment to delivering personally relevant online
experiences. Our marketing communications’ efforts help accelerate product momentum, awareness, adoption,
and engagement. We use online, television, print, radio, and outdoor advertising. We leverage our global online
network and our distribution partnerships to market our products and services to the right people at the right time.
COMPETITION
We operate in the Internet products, services, and content markets, which are highly competitive and
characterized by rapid change, converging technologies, and increasing competition. Our most significant
competition is from Google, Inc. (“Google”), Microsoft, and AOL, Inc. (“AOL”), which each offer an integrated
variety of Internet products, advertising services, technologies, online services and content in a manner similar to
Yahoo!. We compete with these and other companies, including social networking Websites, such as Facebook,
Inc., and MySpace.com, for users, advertisers, publishers, and developers. We also compete with these
companies to obtain agreements with software publishers, Internet access providers, mobile carriers, device
manufacturers and others to promote or distribute our services to their users. We compete with advertising
networks, such as Google AdSense, AOL’s Ad.com, and Microsoft Media Network, as well as traditional media
companies for a share of advertisers’ marketing budgets and in the development of the tools and systems for
managing and optimizing advertising campaigns.
We believe our principal competitive strengths relating to attracting and retaining users include the usefulness,
accessibility, integration, and personalization of the online services that we offer, the quality, relevance, and
presentation of our search results, and the overall user experience on Yahoo! Properties. Our principal
competitive strengths relating to attracting advertisers and publishers are the reach, effectiveness, and efficiency
of our marketing services as well as the creativity of the marketing solutions that we offer. “Reach” is the size of
the audience and/or demographic that can be accessed through the Yahoo! network. “Effectiveness” for
advertisers is the achievement of marketing objectives, which we support by developing campaigns, measuring
the performance of these campaigns against their objectives, and optimizing for their objectives across the
Yahoo! network. “Effectiveness” for publishers is the monetization of their online audiences, which we enable
through our advertising technology platforms and marketing services. “Efficiency” is the simplicity and ease of
use of the services we offer advertisers and publishers.
In international markets, we also compete with local portals that are predominantly supported by local
telecommunication providers or local providers of specific locally designed and marketed Internet services, some of
which may have a potential competitive advantage due to an existing direct billing relationship with their users.
Additional information regarding competition is included in Part I, Item 1A “Risk Factors” of this Annual Report
on Form 10-K.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Yahoo! continually enhances, expands, and launches products and features to meet evolving user, advertiser, and
publisher needs for technological innovation and a deeper, more integrated experience.
Most of our software products and features are developed internally by Yahoo! employees. In some instances,
however, we might purchase technology and license intellectual property rights if the opportunity is strategically
aligned, operationally compatible, and economically advantageous. We believe that Yahoo! is not materially
dependent upon licenses or other agreements with third parties relating to product development.
9