Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome to TRB Conversations powered by exco. I am Brian Morrissey. This is a series of conversations I had last month with media leaders in Cannes. 0:17 Support for this episode comes from exco. exco is the smarter video technology driven by real-time machine learning to maximize revenue across every screen, whether that's web, mobile, CTV, or digital out-of-home. 0:31 Find out more at ex.co. Yahoo, believe it or not, is 30 years old. The portal persists. 0:39 Rob Wilk, CRO of Yahoo, joined me to discuss Yahoo's first-party data advantage across search, email, and content, considering it has 75% of its users logged in, and why he calls competitors' data a fish stew of third-party signals. 0:56 And we also touch on how data is powering Yahoo Scalp, the company's first search product in 17 years. Here's my conversation with Rob. [upbeat music] Welcome to TRB Conversations powered by exco. 1:14 We are here at the TRB studio at Zuma. I'm Brian Morrissey, and I'm joined by Rob Wilk, the CRO of Yahoo. Rob is also a Cannes veteran like myself. We were going through the old days- Yep... along the, the Croisette. 1:30 Yahoo is a big presence here. Yeah. And you got a big concert tonight. I've heard you got a lot of- Tiesto... RSVPs. Tiesto. I don't know Tiesto 'cause I'm out of, I'm out of step with popular culture. 1:40 That's how I know we picked the right person. [laughs] Exactly. [laughs] But talk to me about Yahoo now in, in 2026 'cause I do, and it's not 'cause you're here, I do sense, like, a little, a little Yahoo comeback. 1:53 Well, I wouldn't call it little- Okay... but thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's funny. 1:59 You know, we were talking before, I've been doing this for 31 years, and I, I can honestly tell you this might be one of the most fun years I've had in a long time. 2:07 The advertiser response to what we're doing is really incredible. 2:11 A big part of it is we're really getting ourselves into a spot now where everyone understands, whether it is our PE firm, Apollo, that owns Yahoo, whether it is our agencies, whether it is our clients, they are getting it. 2:25 And I think it's important to remember that a strong Yahoo is good for everyone. Keeps a lot of other big publishers on their toes, gives advertisers and agencies optionality, which is critical for their business. 2:39 If you wanna keep buying the same things every day, clients will start to question, like, what value you actually bring if the recommendations are always the same. 2:46 So we are out there right now talking about new products, new ad products, and most importantly, we're talking about the incredible data that Yahoo has, and I'm happy to, to get into that. Yeah. 2:55 So talk to me about that data advantage. There's a lot of people along, along the Croisette and on these beaches- Sure... talking about their, their unique data advantage. Yeah. So what's yours? Yeah. 3:07 Theirs is usually a mesh, mix-up and mashup of a bunch of third-party- It's a stew... signals. It's a stew. It is really a, a, a fish stew, if you will. Yeah. You know, our- It's like The Big Short. 3:17 I, I was gonna make that reference. [laughs] I wasn't sure if you'd get it. Yeah. The Anthony Bourdain scene in The Big Short. [laughs] That's what the... That's the data that people are selling. 3:24 It's like, you know, two-day-old seafood. Two-day-old seafood. [laughs] I love that you know that. I tend to make movie references that people don't get, so thank you for- I've been covering ad tech for a long time. 3:31 Okay. [laughs] So yeah, God. Yeah, I mean, it's all... 3:34 It's really important because it's all first party, and I, I don't like the term deterministic because it sounds, in and of itself, like I'm making something up, so I just try to stick to regular English, which is we have our own data that we create. 3:47 75% of the people that use Yahoo are logged in when they use it, so we have an incredible goldmine of data around three really important parts. A, search. You and I talked about it. I, I grew up in the search business. 4:02 Yeah. Advertisers understand the value of expressed intent. We have that. Still the third, third largest search engine, billions of searches. Number two is email. 4:11 We still have hundreds of millions of people that use Yahoo Mail every single day, check it seven times a day, so we have a great understanding of people's shopping habits. 4:20 And then the last one, the obvious one, is our content. So we understand if people go to Yahoo Sports and they read a story about the Knicks or the Sixers, which you're a fan of- Yeah... 4:29 or whether they go to Yahoo Finance and they check a stock quote or whether they go to Yahoo Entertainment to read about the, the Emmy Awards that are coming up. 4:36 If you add those three things together, our search data, our mail data, and all the content that they browse, we have a very complete picture of consumer behavior. 4:47 There are lots of other publishers on the Croisette, you are right, that preach, "We've got great data," and usually it's they have one- Yeah... or maybe two. Very few have all three. 4:58 In fact, I can count the companies that have all three on one hand, and I wouldn't need all five fingers to do it. Yeah. Well, you're using publishers very broadly 'cause a lot of the Croisette is not publishers. 5:07 Uh, it's funny. Ad techy- I mean, it's a supermarket. A supermarket is a publisher now. Yeah. Ad tech, you know, they have a lot of data, and they, and they're able to apply it. 5:15 Publishers themselves, you know, content publishers are not well represented among the- Sure, and I think that's part of the reason why we're still here- Right... 5:24 and we're still strong, is that there are users we've had now for 25, 30 years. We just, we just celebrated 30 years, and we are an incredible tool to help people get things done. 5:35 We don't try to over-engage them and, and get them, you know, scrolling mindlessly, excuse me. We are about information that you need, you get it, and you move on with your day. 5:45 And it's a, it's a great model, and it's- Yeah... it's now really working, and it's separating Yahoo from a lot of other, I'll just say companies, maybe not publishers, other companies that cannot compete- Right... 5:55 with the level and depth of data that Yahoo has. And by the way, all of that data also powers- The Yahoo DSP. So advertisers can use that data on Yahoo, but they can of course take it to go and use it- Right... 6:07 across the open web, across CTV and that's why we've been winning a ton of business on the DSP side. So I think about, you know, we used to be in a portal era. 6:16 I think when I first started writing about this business- Yep... it was, it was all about the portals, right? Like, publishers would complain about, like, how all the money was going to the portals and not to them. 6:26 [laughs] This is like, they've just, like, changed a little bit. And, and then we sort of went into a platform era, and that was sort of kicked off by, by Google really, and, and then Facebook along with it. 6:38 And now it looks like we're moving into an AI/agentic era. At least a l- at least the, the billboards along the Croissette assure me that the agentic- [laughs]... future is here. Yeah. 6:49 I have some doubts that it is necessarily here in reality, but that's okay. You gotta fake it till you make it. What is the sort of AI story that Yahoo is telling? 6:58 'Cause I think about when we were moving from the portal era to the platform era, I wrote approximately a, a trillion stories about, like, you know, Yahoo trying to compete with Google and search and the search wars and all of that. 7:12 Oh, yeah. Yahoo's not, uh, getting into the hyperscaler wars right now. So what is the sort of AI and agentic approach that you're taking? Sure. 7:22 So let's talk first, let's talk consumer products on Yahoo properties, okay? Your statement about, you know, is it really here? Is it not here? I would argue it's here. It's not here at scale, but it is here. 7:35 We will be at Cannes next year and the year after, and we will be blown away by how far we've come. But if you look at Yahoo Mail as an example, everyone gets emails that are too long for them to read. 7:45 We can summarize it through AI. We can let you know, "Hey, you got," whatever, "100 emails in your inbox. These are the five that we think are really gonna be important to you." That's all AI driven. Yeah. 7:55 Our news app is powered by Artifact, which is Kevin Systrom's company that- Yep... he founded Instagram. 8:01 We bought his company, and really that became the engine for Yahoo News, both app and mobile web and desktop, to basically understand who you are, and then using AI, make recommendations of news stories that we think you would like. 8:14 So I can give you examples on Yahoo Sports, which we talked about. We now have personalities that you can chat with on Yahoo Sports. Yeah. 8:21 That's all AI driven because so many of our writers have written so much for Yahoo Sports over the years that we can train models to act like that writer, and you can chat with them about the NBA draft, or you're thinking about your fantasy draft and you wanna have a chat, "I'm thinking about this player versus that player. 8:36 What do you think?" That's all, like, consumer driven. And then our biggest announcement was January with Yahoo Scout. Right. So to your point around- Wait, wait. Can you, can you talk a little bit about Yahoo Scout? 8:48 Sure. 'Cause I thought that was really interesting because I think a lot of people forget that you do have, like, you know, a sizable search business. It's not the same as, like, you know- Sure... Google search business. 8:56 Sure. Google did actually win that one it turns out. But- Zero-sum. Like we still make- Exactly... a significant amount of revenue through search. No, well, look, people say that about, like, Bing. 9:04 I mean, like, Bing's, like, a massive business. Uh- It was 18 billion when I was there. Yeah, but Scout, I, um, when it came out, I was like, "God, back in search." 9:13 And there's a case, like, that search is, is getting interesting again- Oh my God... thanks to AI. You literally stole my heart just now. I, again, I grew up in search. 9:23 I worked for Overture in 2002 that got acquired- Yeah... by Yahoo. Go2.com for the, uh, the OGs. [laughs] The old, the OG was Go2.com. That became rebranded Overture and then got acquired. 9:32 So I w- my first digital love, I always say, is search. But for the first time in 17 years, Yahoo launched a search product. First time in 17 years. Yeah. Why? 9:41 Because AI enabled us to do things that we would not have had the time or the, or the resources to do. So basically think of Yahoo Scout as an AI answer engine with a wrapper that is all Yahoo personality. 9:55 So we, again, we have all the data. We know your search history. We know all of that. We know the content. 10:00 So when you ask a question, you get a very unique response, and it's what you to think of that response as we're never gonna build our own large language model, so we rent one from Claude. It's very unique. 10:10 We match that. Microsoft is a partner of ours, so we match that with what's called Bing's Grounding API. So that's basically just do we understand entities like a restaurant or a store? 10:23 And then we have all the Yahoo data, so the, the mix of all of those allows you to do something super unique. 10:30 We launched it very quickly, so we acquired a company and then put that company on you're only Scout, and within months we had a beta. 10:39 If you use it, it's basically just a more interesting Yahoo feel of how you can get AI answers. 10:47 The biggest differentiator though is because we're Yahoo and we have 30 years of working with other publishers and making sure that we drive traffic back to them, 10:56 whenever we answer a question, we are very clear about what the source of that information is, and we make it very prominent because we want to make sure that not only do consumers get an answer, but publishers still get some of that downstream traffic. 11:10 Right. One of the big challenges, I'm sure you know this very well, is ChatGPT or any of these companies, their notations of where their sources come from look like footnotes at the end of a research paper. Yeah. 11:22 Ours look like what people are used to, which is like, "Hey, the source of this is X," and it's very prominently listed. 11:29 So we're trying to make sure that publishers that we've worked with for years, that we not only share traffic but share revenue with, still get traffic from Yahoo. It's something they depend on. Right. Yeah. 11:39 That's part of the AI booyah base, I guess, that, that they're- [laughs] AI base... they're cooking up. Final thing is around creators. Yeah. 11:46 I mean, you guys are, are getting involved with creators, and look, it, here at Cannes, like, creators are... You know, I think it's one of, one of the storylines of Cannes is, like, creators are way more prominent now. 11:59 And really, creators are just publishers at the end of the day. And Yahoo's history has been, you know, partnering with publishers, so it makes complete sense. But d- tell me about the creator strategy. 12:10 I have to just say, you are the first one to actually put that together. Oh, thank you. I know that seems, for you, probably relatively obvious, but Yahoo- I'm a historian of [laughs] this space, you know? 12:19 Well, you're a, you're a well-studied historian, because you are right. Creators is just another source of content that we think Yahoo users will be interested in. 12:29 You are also right, I have seen more creators on panels and in events here this year at Cannes than any year before. 12:36 It started to bubble up three years ago, two years ago, but, like, this year, even at our own Yahoo Beach, we've had a bunch of creators that we flew out that, that are Yahoo creators that are talking about the benefits. 12:46 But it is, in a way, another source of what we believe is content that is interesting to people. I think the big change that you're seeing this year is creators that are leaning into working with brands. Yeah. 12:59 Where, you know, the early days of creators was like, "Oh, I, I, I, I will only work with brands that I personally would, would know or like, or..." Or some of them are even like, "I don't, I don't want that. 13:09 That's considered selling out." And as this creator economy booms, they're starting to be smart, and they're like, they're not just creators anymore. They're like their own entrepreneurs with their own business. 13:20 They're very smart. They know how to grab an audience, and they know how to work with brands in a way that their, their audiences will- Yeah... will c- will like. 13:28 But are you going to be, like, brokering deals with the brands? Like, I, I'm just wondering, because there is an openness to working with brands- Oh, yeah... among, with, with creators. 13:38 And, you know, I think there's always this, but they often don't have the infrastructure that is needed. They don't have necessarily the relationships that- Yeah, we do that. We do that for them. 13:48 So we work with advertisers. We have so many different products that we can offer. One of them is a creator package. 13:54 So there's a Yahoo Entertainment creator that I like, and it's Yes, I Watch Everything, and it's basically two people that love TV and movies and, and media. 14:03 So we will introduce them to an advertiser as part of a larger campaign, and they can sponsor the page. They can, you know, integrate into some of the things that they're talking about. So we will do all the work. 14:14 We, we, we provide the infrastructure for the creators on Yahoo, so they re- really only have to worry about creating their own content. They don't have to worry about anything else. We bring all the advertisers. 14:24 We bring the scale. We bring distribution. We bring the infrastructure. Okay, final question. Yeah. Ezra Klein style, what, what is your favorite, of all the times you've been to Cannes, I'm putting you on the spot here. 14:35 [laughs] Okay. I didn't know this question was coming. All the... Absolutely. All the times you've come to Cannes, what has been your sort of favorite Cannes experience? 14:44 Like, a specific, like, that is why Cannes, despite a lot of the grief it gets from... I, there's a lot of grief about Cannes. A lot of people are very triggered about Cannes. 14:54 Matt Belloni from Puck took some serious shots at Cannes recently. What'd he say? He called it soulless corporate boondoggle. That's a really harsh take. [laughs] Listen, here's what I'll tell you. 15:05 Again, as someone who's been doing this for three decades, this is, this might not answer your question exactly, but, like, my favorite thing is I walk into places, whether it's clients coming to me or whether we go to events outside of the Yahoo Beach, 15:20 there is a real, like, love and community of people that I grew up with. I told you this story off camera. A woman who I adore, who used to be on my team 25 years ago, just became a CMO for the first time. So to me, 15:35 to me, it's like people that I grew up in this industry with and I love, they're all here, and I'm in New York, so yes, you could argue I could easily see a lot of these people, but it's very hard to get all these people in the same place, in a beautiful area. 15:48 Like, I was at Hotel de, de Cap last night. Oh, okay. Not to flex, but I, my point is, people were, were, were complaining. It's hot. It's far, and I'm like- [laughs]... can you just look around for a moment? Yeah. 16:00 This is literally one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, not just France, in the world, and we're here, you know, drinking rosé and, and chatting- Yeah... with people. Like, I just, I refuse to be that jaded. 16:12 I think it's, it's, I feel lucky that we get to do this, and there's a real sense of, like, friendship here that I, I care about. Okay, and the ROI question. Yes. Give me a compelling case. 16:24 You guys look like you're spending a lot of money here. We're not. I know you're saying you're getting good deals, et cetera. [laughs] But, like, that beach- Look, it-... is big. 16:32 It is, but the beauty of it is, when you look like you're spending a lot, but you're not- Despite me never not knowing who this act is, she sounds expensive. 16:40 Well, when you have connections and, and big, big DJs like Tiesto wanna do this with Yahoo, they're more flexible than you would think, honestly. 16:50 And the beautiful thing we're doing is it looks like we're spending a lot, and I'm telling you that we're not. Apollo, if you're listening, I promise that's true. 16:57 [laughs] Uh, yeah, I, I, I think this is, this has, like, been maybe, maybe top three at worst, but maybe one of my favorite Cannes of all time. Okay. That's the truth. Cool. Rob, thank you so much. 17:07 Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. [upbeat music]
