The Yahoo! app for iOS. Source: Yahoo!
For Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) it isn't enough to source content from top publishers such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and The Motley Fool. CEO Marissa Mayer wants her own team of tech reporters, AllThingsD's Kara Swisher wrote over the weekend. Two of the site's tech reporters received overtures from a Yahoo! recruiter.
"The initiative is a news website, focused on technology, that is extremely social friendly and another way to drive significant traffic back to our platform," Swisher wrote, citing an email sent by the recruiter. "We have identified this endeavor as a key anchor of our media strategy and a high growth opportunity for the media organization."
Should Yahoo! stock investors like this move? I think so. In building out its news operation, Yahoo! should reduce its dependence on search while courting more profitable organic traffic.
We've known for a while that Yahoo! isn't pleased with Bing. Microsoft's search engine doesn't deliver enough traffic. In Q3, Mayer repeated an oft-used refrain that Yahoo! and Microsoft have been "trading share" in search while Google continues to dominate that part of the market.
A broader tie-up with Mayer's former employer could come at some point. In the meantime, Yahoo! introduced "Stream Ads" to help marketers pitch their wares in context across all Yahoo! sites and mobile apps. Think of it as similar to placing an ad in a Facebook news feed.
More news (i.e., more content) means more opportunity to place "Stream Ads," and thereby more revenue. It's a smart idea, and yet another reason to believe Yahoo! stock will beat the market so long as it's Mayer steering the business.
Do you agree? Where do you see Yahoo! stock heading over the next three years? Leave a comment below to let us know where you stand.
