Yahoo 2014 Annual Report Download - page 16

Internet usage is subject to seasonal fluctuations, typically declining during customary summer
vacation periods and increasing during the fourth quarter holiday period due to higher online retail
activity. These seasonal patterns have affected, and we expect will continue to affect, our business
and quarterly sequential revenue growth rates.
Marketing
Yahoo is one of the most recognized brands in the world. Our products, services, and content enable
us to attract, retain, and engage users, advertisers, and publishers. Our marketing teams engage in
each step of the development, deployment, and management of products and services, and in
content design. Our marketing team will help shape our offerings to better market them to our
potential and existing users.
Competition
We face significant competition from online search engines, sites offering integrated internet
products and services, social media and networking sites, e-commerce sites, and broadcast and print
media. We also compete with advertising networks, exchanges, demand side platforms and other
platforms, such as Google AdSense, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, 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.
Our competitors include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and AOL. Several of our competitors offer an
integrated variety of Internet products, advertising services, technologies, online services and/or
content in a manner similar to us that compete for the attention of our users, advertisers, developers
and third-party Website publishers. We also compete with these companies to obtain agreements
with third parties to promote or distribute our services. In addition, we compete with social media
and networking sites which are attracting an increasing share of users, users’ online time and online
advertising dollars.
In a number of international markets, especially those in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin
America, we face substantial competition from local Internet service providers and other entities that
offer search, communications, and other commercial services and often have a competitive
advantage due to dominant market share in their territories, greater local brand recognition, focus on
a single market, familiarity with local tastes and preferences, or greater regulatory and operational
flexibility.
Yahoo’s competitive advantage centers on the fact that we are a guide focused on making user’s
digital habits inspiring and entertaining—this includes daily activities like communicating, searching,
reading and sharing information. We believe our principal competitive strengths include the
usefulness, accessibility, integration, and personalization of the online services that we offer; the
quality, personalization, and presentation of our search results; and the overall user experience on our
leading premium content properties and other 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 their objectives across the Yahoo Network. “Effectiveness” for publishers is the
monetization of their online audiences. “Efficiency” is the simplicity and ease of use of the services
we offer advertisers and publishers.
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