Yahoo! is repositioning its business to attract younger audiences, says marketing chief

“In the past we have been successful at marketing to advertising communities but our consumer focus has been patchy at best across EMEA. Since Marissa came on board there has been much more focus and vision on inspiring and entertaining people’s digital habits,” he said.

The last few years has seen Yahoo! make a string of acquisitions including Tumblr, Flickr in 2005, along with the content summarising app Summly this year. It also relaunched its Mail app last December and has since seen a 50 per cent hike in Mail usage in general, while photo uploads to the Flickr app have also surged 50 per cent quarter on quarter, according to Bridge.

Mobile has become a major focus point, with the platform adding 100m mobile users in the last four months, taking the total to 300m mobile users, according to Bridge.

“My marketing efforts have been heavily focused on mobile and uptake has been big as a result. We are also using a lot of what I call ‘purple dollars’ which is Yahoo inventory to promote our products.

“In the UK we reach 25m monthly users and we want to engage with those we already have while attracting more and more younger users. If you look at the acquisition of Tumblr and how we have repositioned ourselves in the mobile space – by doing that we start attracting younger people – that tipping point we have been talking about for so long in mobile has now happened for us,” he said.

Music is the other key focus point in its charm offensive to attract younger demographics. It is now midway through its global On The Road campaign, which it refers to as its “mobile entertainment and innovation” festival. This has toured Europe and will culminate in the sponsorship of the Wireless festival at Queen Elizabeth Olympic park in London on 12 July.

“The strategy behind this is to use music to engage with younger demographics. Our earned social media for this has also been huge. We have launched our third competition for people to win tickets to the festival and it was a trending topic on Twitter – it really resonates with young demographics.

“We are doing lots of experiential stuff during the day and social media activity off the back of that.

“This is the biggest ever music activity we have done for Yahoo! and one of the biggest marketing campaigns in the UK in general,” he said.

The challenge will be to ensure it can sustain the interest and engagement once the festival has passed, according to Bridge.

Yahoo! will now turn its focus to sports and preparing for the World Cup next year.