CEO Marissa Mayer discussing mobile at Yahoo’s NewFront
The impact of Yahoo’s acquisition of mobile ad network and analytics firm, Flurry, last July is now playing out in the company’s latest management reorganization.
Marissa Mayer announced the promotion of Flurry’s head of product, Prashant Fuloria, to SVP of advertising products in a memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Fuloria will report to Mayer. Scott Burke remains SVP of advertising technology, but the move means that now he and Brightroll founder Tod Sacerdoti will both report to Fuloria. A Yahoo spokesperson confirmed the news with the WSJ, saying Fuloria will oversee the development and integration of Yahoo’s advertising products in display, native, video and mobile.
Mayer’s commitment to reviving Yahoo’s ad business in large part via investing in mobile ad tech, mobile ad formats and increasing mobile reach has been on display for over a year now. The role Yahoo’s Flurry acquisition is playing in this shift is becoming more clear, with mobile becoming the linchpin in its efforts to improve its advertising offerings across its platforms. The integration of Flurry into the Yahoo ad ecosystem has already been fairly swift.
At CES last year, Yahoo announced the first big step in simplifying its advertising offerings across native, audience, premium and search ads under the moniker Yahoo Advertising. It outlined a tiered approach to buying: Yahoo Ad Manager for a self-serve option, Yahoo Ad Manager Plus for larger advertisers includes access to audience and premium ad inventory, and Yahoo Ad Exchange as its programmatic arm. At that time, the company also brought Tumblr into the advertising fold and rolled out several of its digital magazines against which it aims to sell premium rich media and video advertising. A month later, Yahoo Gemini launched as part of Yahoo Ad Manager.
Earlier this month, reports surfaced that Yahoo has been beefing up its mobile ads team and will announce an overhaul of its mobile ad products at a developer conference in February. The company has been sending invitations this week to its mobile developer conference “featuring Flurry” to be held February 19 in San Francisco.
Fuloria is an alum of both Google and Facebook, noted Re/code, which first reported word of Fuloria’s promotion. He’ll now be playing a key role in helping Yahoo chip away at the mobile ad share dominance enjoyed by Google and Facebook.
Mayer reported Yahoo’s first revenue gain in display advertising (2 percent) in seven consecutive quarters for the period ending in September 2014. Continuing on that growth trajectory will be key for both Mayer and Yahoo. The company reports Q4 earnings on January 27.
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