I am in awe of the amount of extremely high quality content you create each week. I'm a ghost writer as a side-hussle. My clients are convinced that nobody will read email-delivered, newsletter-style articles that are more than 600 words. So, I send them your newsletter as proof of concept. --- More to the point, I look back on my career (and yours) and think about the profound importance of 2006. In 2006, 3 things converged. Broadband passed 50% of homes in the USA, Google published The Chubby whitepaper, and Congress passed the "Do Not Call Act" which freed up $17 billion in direct response media budgets virtually overnight. I was at Yahoo! at the time. My job was to leverage broadband to help position Yahoo! to compete with the major television networks for brand building TV advertising budgets. We were on a roll with that strategy. Yahoo! participated in the TV Upfront marketplace successfully for the first time in 2006. Then everything changed. Google exploded its revenue growth because direct response marketers were scrambling to re-direct telemarketing budgets and Google was ready to scale to meet their needs (thanks to distributed computing and broadband.) Google's success caused Wall Street to put enormous pressure on Yahoo! to grow ad revenues using the same techniques. Terry Semel (the most sophisticated brand building marketer to ever run a digital media company) was pushed out because he as associated with an "old media company" strategy for growing ad revenues. In April of 2007, Yahoo! bought the Right Media Exchange and the whole future of display advertising would be measured using lowest common denominator direct response metrics forevermore. From an advertising-centric perspective, 2006 was a helluva year.
Thank you for another informative & inspiring article. It's incredible how computing has brought us closer together for the past 50 years. I used Unix Talk for instant messaging in 1982 and saw WWW for the 1st time in 1992 and am very excited to virtually visit gardens & museums around the world with a 4D immersive experience!
I am in awe of the amount of extremely high quality content you create each week. I'm a ghost writer as a side-hussle. My clients are convinced that nobody will read email-delivered, newsletter-style articles that are more than 600 words. So, I send them your newsletter as proof of concept. --- More to the point, I look back on my career (and yours) and think about the profound importance of 2006. In 2006, 3 things converged. Broadband passed 50% of homes in the USA, Google published The Chubby whitepaper, and Congress passed the "Do Not Call Act" which freed up $17 billion in direct response media budgets virtually overnight. I was at Yahoo! at the time. My job was to leverage broadband to help position Yahoo! to compete with the major television networks for brand building TV advertising budgets. We were on a roll with that strategy. Yahoo! participated in the TV Upfront marketplace successfully for the first time in 2006. Then everything changed. Google exploded its revenue growth because direct response marketers were scrambling to re-direct telemarketing budgets and Google was ready to scale to meet their needs (thanks to distributed computing and broadband.) Google's success caused Wall Street to put enormous pressure on Yahoo! to grow ad revenues using the same techniques. Terry Semel (the most sophisticated brand building marketer to ever run a digital media company) was pushed out because he as associated with an "old media company" strategy for growing ad revenues. In April of 2007, Yahoo! bought the Right Media Exchange and the whole future of display advertising would be measured using lowest common denominator direct response metrics forevermore. From an advertising-centric perspective, 2006 was a helluva year.
Indeed it was Mark! Our seasoning shoes!
Hi Mark, 2006 was indeed an amazing year at Yahoo!, and since then Yahoo!'s great talent have propelled many companies, including Google & Microsoft.
Dear Rishad, once again a very enriching article that affirms the importance of being informed.
Thank you, regards, Alex.
Thank you for another informative & inspiring article. It's incredible how computing has brought us closer together for the past 50 years. I used Unix Talk for instant messaging in 1982 and saw WWW for the 1st time in 1992 and am very excited to virtually visit gardens & museums around the world with a 4D immersive experience!