Yahoo appoints CRO to drive 'MaVeNs' sales
Yahoo has promoted Lisa Utzscheider as its first CRO to head up ad sales at the online web giant, a role that had effectively been vacant for over a year since the departure of its ex-COO Henrique De Castro, as its seeks to push its ‘MaVeNs’ ad units to advertisers.
The announcement was made today (23 July) by Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, who said that all global sales staff will report to Utzscheider, who joined from Amazon in order to head up Yahoo’s sales operations North America and LATAM at the back end of last year.
She added: “Lisa has been pivotal in structuring the sales teams across North and South America for growth. She has successfully integrated sales across Yahoo, BrightRoll, Flurry and Tumblr to help bring new opportunities and tremendous value to advertisers.
“As we continue to build a truly global advertising business that is positioned for long-term growth, Lisa’s strong leadership and industry knowledge will help us accelerate towards those goals.”
Yahoo has effectively been without an employee solely charged with leading its global sales efforts since it dismissed then COO de Castro - who defected from Google similar to Mayer – after his strategy was failing to meet earlier targets.
The move comes the same week as Yahoo announced its latest quarterly results, with market observers adjudging them to be ‘mixed’, after it reported a 15 per cent annual increase in revenues ($1.2bn), but soaring traffic acquisition costs meant it operated at a $22m loss during the period.