“Yahoo’s perception is that their only competitor is Google. But 95 percent of their revenue comes from advertising — so their competitors are really the broadcast TV networks. They think they’re in the search game, when they should really be in the brand advertising game…. Advertising is a business that is both art and science. The merger focuses unduly on science. With Google-Doubleclick, and Yahoo-Microsoft, it is as if the scientific community is taking over advertising. And advertising is not about science.”
MySpace taps Martha Stewart, Yahoo vet to run ad sales
Wenda Harris Millard, who led ad sales for Martha Stewart, Yahoo, and Ziff Davis, has taken over ad sales at MySpace, according to a blog post by CEO Owen Van Natta. Technically, Millard isn’t becoming a MySpace employee, but she effectively replaces Jeff Berman, whose resignation was announced in the same post. Millard’s company, Media Link, will oversee day-to-day ad sales operations.
Millard is the latest in a series of successful execs Van Natta has brought on board in hopes of restarting the stalled social media site. She’s been credited with bringing big-brand advertisers to Yahoo, an old-fashioned ad sales strategy that went in the opposite direction from Google’s Web 2.0 self-serve system for the Long Tail.
Millard jumped from Yahoo to Martha Stewart in 2008. She has openly criticized Yahoo’s corporate culture for favoring technology over salesmanship:
It’s intriguing that Van Natta has brought such a brazen opponent of the Web 2.0 mindset on board.
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About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.