Excellent points Kamutula! Thanks!

1. Yahoo are not dominant in any of the the verticals in which they collect revenue, namely Yahoo Sport, Yahoo News, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo etc. For each one of these there are already dedicated websites or portals providing the service/information more comprehensively than they are would be doing ( in the eyes of the advertiser, at least ). Hence advertising revenues in these verticals would gravely be subdued.

2. As uplifting as the strategy to enter the mobile platform ( through what they are calling MAVENS ) would sound, they have had to face huge entry costs, especially in terms of Traffic Acquisition Costs ( TAC ). These are the payables to firms that direct consumer and business traffic to their websites. Hence we see that while Google have built a network of “affiliates” ( called distribution partners or network members ) to provide these services ( hence reducing the cost, through group concessions ), Yahoo don’t have. Attempts to bull-dose this can be seen in Yahoo’s 300% sudden rise in TAC as % of revenue in 2015. Google have maintained theirs between 18-20% as % of revenue ( and, in fact, steadily reducing with corresponding rise in gross revenues ).

My view is that these will likely form part of the major defining components in Yahoo’s business strategy going forward viz: Are those verticals ( and as many as they are ) the best incubators for advertising revenue? How are they to manage the largest components of their costs?