Yahoo 2015 Annual Report Download - page 9

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 9 of the 2015 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 180

  • 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
  • 135
  • 136
  • 137
  • 138
  • 139
  • 140
  • 141
  • 142
  • 143
  • 144
  • 145
  • 146
  • 147
  • 148
  • 149
  • 150
  • 151
  • 152
  • 153
  • 154
  • 155
  • 156
  • 157
  • 158
  • 159
  • 160
  • 161
  • 162
  • 163
  • 164
  • 165
  • 166
  • 167
  • 168
  • 169
  • 170
  • 171
  • 172
  • 173
  • 174
  • 175
  • 176
  • 177
  • 178
  • 179
  • 180

Our current Board of Directors is composed of:
• Marissa Mayer, our President and CEO; Maynard Webb, our Chairman of the Board; David Filo;
Susan James; Thomas McInerney; H. Lee Scott; and Jane Shaw, Ph.D.
Strategic Plan
On February 2, 2016, we announced a strategic plan to simplify Yahoo, narrowing our focus on areas
of strength to fuel growth, drive revenue, and increase efficiency in 2016 and beyond. Yahoo will
simplify its product portfolio to emphasize the products that distinguish the Company competitively
and drive the most substantial portion of our users, revenue and market opportunities. For users, we
will focus on three global platforms: Search, Mail and Tumblr, and four verticals: News, Sports,
Finance and Lifestyle. For advertisers, we will focus on two core offerings: Yahoo Gemini and
BrightRoll. Gemini combines our search and native ad offerings, while BrightRoll offers programmatic
buying and selling tools for video, display and native advertising.
The goals of the strategic plan are:
• Improve user and advertiser product quality and grow daily active users (“DAUs”)
• Drive continued growth in revenue realized through Mavens (mobile, video, native and social)
• Improve profitability
• Reduce operating expenses
• Limit revenue impact of product and regional exits
• Explore non-strategic asset divestitures and free up cash flow
• Deliver increased value to shareholders, advertisers, and the more than one billion people who
use Yahoo’s products and services
User Offerings
Yahoo is focused on informing, connecting, and entertaining our users with our search (Yahoo
Search), communications (including Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger), and digital content products
(including Tumblr, and our 4 core verticals: Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo
Lifestyle).
Our user offerings include:
Search
Yahoo Search serves as a guide for users to discover the information on the Internet that matters to
them the most. In 2015, Yahoo launched a new personalized search experience on mobile, offering
rich results from the web and, if signed in, personalized contextual results surfaced from a user’s
email, contacts, and calendar. The new Yahoo mobile search experience helps users find and take
action on all of the information they are looking for on the go. We plan to continue investing in a
differentiated mobile search experience by allocating additional resources to develop new search
technology through our Yahoo Gemini platform that surfaces personalized results for the user and
anticipates the users’ needs.
Under our Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement (“Search Agreement”) with
Microsoft Corporation (“Microsoft”), Microsoft provides algorithmic and paid search advertising
services on a non-exclusive basis for Yahoo Properties on mobile, desktop, and Affiliate sites. This
5