Private: Intelligence

Dear AOL and Yahoo.  Please, please, please… pull it together and get your respective company’s headed in the right direction!!  Whether you merge or not, I don’t care – just get your respective messes cleaned up and start moving ahead in a positive direction!

I’ve been working in digital marketing since 1994, and I’ve been writing this column since 2001, and this is the first time I‘ve ever written an open letter to a company, much less two.  Consider this a last ditch effort.  Consider it pleading and begging.  Consider it what you will, but please, at the very least, consider it.

You’ve both been around pretty much since the beginning, or at least since things got interesting.  AOL is more responsible than any other company for driving people to the Internet and Yahoo is still one of the biggest online brands in the world.  Our parents know about AOL and Yahoo, we’ve all used AOL and Yahoo, and many people are still planning on using AOL and Yahoo for many years to come.  This constant chaos under which you both operate has to stop!

AOL – you are now having a clash of ego’s, and you brought this upon yourself by trying to buy your way to the top through acquisition.  I don’t think that strategy was wrong, but I do think it backfired.  If I were you, I would identify a single position for your company and stick to it.  No more rebranding your company structure to the industry every year.  No more “Platform A” type moves.   When you buy a company, even a company like the Huffington Post, don’t let them forget who bought who, and who’s the boss.  You’ve been in the driver seat for a while, but you don’t act like it.  Maybe you need some swagger.  Maybe you just need some confidence.  Whatever it is I can 100% guarantee that you cannot buy it – you have to build it.  You have the engineering talent in house (I hope), so use it.  Put a plan in action and stick with it for 3-4 years and lets see what happens!

Yahoo – where do I begin?  You’ve let Google eat your lunch for the last 5-10 years, and its time to do something about it.  You fired Carol Bartz, for better or for worse, but you paid her over $10MM to leave, and I’d bet you don’t have a plan for what to do next.  You routinely buy up-and-coming companies, and in a mater of 12-18 months those companies are closed down or running slower at the very least.   You also have engineers (I hope) who are capable of great things – put them to work!  Its obvious the “build or buy” question has been answered behind your great purple doors – buy doesn’t work, so maybe its time to build?  Identify an area of growth (hint: its not search or social) and go after it. 

Both of you are behemoths and (to borrow a government line) too big to fail. Not from a financial perspective, but from a swagger perspective.  The Internet is about to become the largest grossing ad medium in the world, and it’s already become the single most important development of the last 50 years.  If you fail, it will look to outsiders like we can’t take care of our own.  It will appear as though we’re unable to manage large companies and it will look like Google is taking over the world, with Facebook nipping at its heels.

Facebook is another one – they’re not generating as much revenue as they had hoped because they’re currently a one-trick-pony, built on text and static image ads.  They’re cold calling users who create Facebook pages for companies and soliciting them for ads (I know – they called me), which reeks of desperation.  You two can maintain a position of strength if you can just get some swagger back and focus on where you are better and stronger than Facebook and Google – content!!  Have you ever cold-called users looking for money before?  I doubt it.

Dear AOL and Yahoo – I’m rooting for you and so are lots of others in my immediate vicinity.  We may have had our differences over the years (ok, we’ve had lots of differences), but a heated discourse is a good thing.  Back in 1995, 1996 and 1997 you both were the bad boys of Internet publishing.  You never backed down from a battle, you stuck true to your rate cards, and you negotiated with brands from a position of power.  Now you back down, you run your inventory through ad networks at pennies on the dollar and you buy companies with no idea how to integrate and/or run them to profitability.   It’s time get your act together and figure this out!

Let us know what we can do to help – we’re here, we’re ready and we’re willing and able.   In short, we’ve got your back!