By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

Below is an e-mail I received from Yahoo!.  Am I the only person to see similarities between the way Yahoo! is being managed and the way the McCain campaign was being managed?  To be fair I like and respect everyone we work with at Yahoo! but C-level Management seems to be a little lost.  Now that I think about it; what else is new?

Anyways, here you go:

Dear Mr. Polanski,

We wanted to reach out to you directly regarding Google’s decision,
announced earlier today, to terminate the advertising services
agreement that the companies announced in June. Yahoo! continues to
believe in the benefits of the agreement, and is disappointed that Google
has elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court.
Google notified Yahoo! of its refusal to move forward with implementation
of the agreement following indication from the Department of Justice that
it would seek to block it, despite
Yahoo!’s proposed revisions to address the DOJ’s and advertisers’
concerns.

While disappointed by this turn of events, we are writing to you to
reaffirm our commitment to working together to drive your advertising
results, and to provide the continued leadership you expect. The fact is
that this deal was incremental to Yahoo!’s product roadmap and
does not change Yahoo!’s commitment to innovation and growth in
search.

As you know, Yahoo! has long focused on how to improve the user,
advertiser and publisher experience. We will continue to enable you to
easily connect with the consumers you most want to reach, by
creating a more open, efficient and effective marketplace for
advertisers and publishers. We also plan to continue to provide the
cutting-edge advances in products, platforms and services that the
industry needs and expects, by leading the way in helping advertisers
navigate the converging contextual and search ad markets. Finally, we
remain committed to innovation in anticipating the needs of Yahoo!’s
audiences–one of the largest and most engaged populations of
consumers on the web–by creating the unique context that delivers results
for brand advertisers online.

In short, even in the absence of a commercial agreement with Google, we
intend to become an ever-stronger player in online advertising. Our
certainty on this front comes from the progress we continue to
make in many areas, not the least of which are the significant
innovations we’re making in search. We continually optimize our
algorithmic and sponsored search. In fact, in 2008 alone, we have
developed and launched hundreds of improvements to our search engine,
including index expansions and updates, ranking models and
performance tuning. Each of these features is designed to improve  search
quality and deliver a more relevant search experience to our  users.

Particularly in this economic climate, identifying and making rich and
deep connections with your target audience is of the utmost
importance. No company is better prepared to help you succeed in that
quest than Yahoo!. In addition to being the largest aggregate
publisher in the U.S., we are #1 or #2 across virtually every key
category, including being #1 in the categories of News, Sports,
Finance and Entertainment, and we’re putting our leadership to work for
you every day.

By offering extensive reach to consumers, breakthrough advances in
technology, simplifying inefficiencies in the advertising process, putting
new and industry-recognized talent in place, and providing tailored
solutions across our network to meet your needs, we are well prepared to
provide you with the most significant return on your
investment.

We are looking forward to continuing to work with you in building
your business. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or anyone on our
team with your questions, or to discuss your challenges. We’re open to a
productive dialogue with you in the service of continuing our successful
work together.

Warmest Regards,

Hilary Schneider
Executive Vice President, Yahoo! U.S.

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(c)2008 Yahoo!, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Yahoo! Search Marketing is located at
3333 Empire Avenue, Burbank, CA 91504 USA