Cannes 2010: "India responds directly to Advertising": Elisa Steele

afaqs!: What is your view about markets like India where the challenge is to retain the advanced Netizen as well as rope in new consumers?

Steele: What makes India so special is that you have both kinds of users in your country.There are highly sophisticated users who are more technologically advanced than in most countries in the world. They expect more personalised experiences, content experiences and integration across all internet experiences. But then you also have this whole community of people who have not gotten online.

You need to have both strategies to talk to the developed and sophisticated user as well as the user who actually has never used the internet before.

That is why one of the things we are doing in India is build a strong and positive affinity to try and help kids and education so that we can really bring the internet into their lives and have them use the internet as part of their education and research. It is also about how they could enrich their lives through content on internet. We have some partnerships in place that are really interesting.

afaqs!: What is more challenging in India? Retaining the sophisticated users or getting new ones?

Steele: India is a market that responds directly to advertising. When we advertise and make a particular investment, our numbers go up and our engagement goes up.

We are trying to figure out what it takes to have brand loyalty in India. Is there such a thing as brand loyalty in India for internet brands? You can actually see the numbers directly co-relate with the advertising investment.

afaqs!: Isn't there brand loyalty or affinity for internet brands in India?

Steele: I wouldn't say that we don't see any, but we see an increase that is directly co-related with advertising. We have a strong position in India whether we advertise or not. But when we do, we see increased metrics.

afaqs!: Then isn't it a bit too risky to work in such a volatile market?

Steele: I think it is all upside. We do not see the numbers plummeting when we don't advertise.

afaqs!: How do you get new users in an emerging market?

Steele: There are two things. One is make it easy to understand so that it does not intimidate. And the second is communication.

In the US, for example, the way we get people to spend more time with us is by having really great content that is engaging. However, in a place like Indonesia that does not work. What is going to work in Indonesia is an economical feature phone that will quickly get the user e-mail so that he can connect with family and friends. So there are different strategies - ease of product usage in emerging markets and more involved content experiences in countries like the US or the UK.

afaqs!: Globally, what have been the challenges? Is it search or social marketing?

Steele: Globally, those are applications that are really important to our business. We are looking hard at search but have had some confusion in the market of what we were about for search. I think we are over that.

We are working hard on the user experience in making search the core part of what we do at Yahoo! It is a big portion of our revenue stream and we are not getting out of that business anytime soon.

Social is a core part of our content strategy. I think we have done a good job at local content, licensed content and in original programming. It is not enough to just produce good content. You have to be able to interact with it whether it is sharing passions and interests.

This is as important as integrating with social network sites that people like to spend time on. That is why we are integrating with Facebook and Twitter to deliver the brand promise that when you come to Yahoo! you not only can enjoy the Yahoo! content but get the best of the other sites you like.

afaqs!: Why can't Yahoo! have its own social platform instead of tying up with Facebook or Twitter? Is it a sign that you have given up on that sector?

Steele: Not at all! We believe that social is a critical part of spending time on our network. We don't have a strategy exclusive to integrate with Facebook. We also have a Yahoo! destination called Yahoo! Pulse. It is a social networking capability on Yahoo! where you can import your Yahoo!, Facebook or any other contacts.

When you're on Yahoo! Pulse you can get all your feeds from various sites. You don't have to go to all the sites. The tie-up with Facebook is not exclusive but it is important because that is where people are spending a lot of their time.

afaqs!: You are sitting on a huge database of users. What would that database mean to advertisers?

Steele: It means everything to them. It is a huge asset. Yahoo! is quite well known for its scale. There are not many players with such scale because the web is fragmented with smaller players.

But the scale is not as valuable unless it is coupled with science and the science is all about finding the right consumer at the right time. It has been the No 1 thing in all the conversations that we have had at Cannes (and with clients). They want to understand the insights we have of the consumer.

Those are the best partnerships we have as well because we take our scale and we hone it to the target of what our customers are looking for. That is a lot of value to advertisers. They get better return on investment and efficiency and they learn more about their consumers along with us.

We also have the flexibility and ability to showcase art so that you can have an appeal with your brand online. That is something that advertisers are more used to in the broadcast world but we have a lot of more possibilities with the Yahoo! canvas itself.

We are doing a lot of innovation on how to display that art. So, our key message is that we can do all three things for advertisers. We can give you the scale you need with the science to focus on your consumers and the art to be able to express it.

afaqs!: How do you divide your marketing strategy between traditional and online?

Steele: Globally, the highest percentage of our marketing spends is in online. That is our biggest and most important medium. It is actually hard to do because advertisers do not generally spend big on digital. You can get so much more for so much less than you can get in traditional medium - it is a big move for a big brand!

We do invest in other channels that you can call traditional whether it is print, broadcast or out of home because we want to be where our consumers are. They are mostly spending a predominant amount of their time online, but it is not the only place where they spend their time.

We walk down the streets with our phones and there is an environment there that Yahoo! wants to be a part of. We want to remind consumers that we are a part of their lives. We are always going to have a marketing strategy that is integrated and it is not exclusive to any one medium.

That being said, word of mouth is probably the most powerful brand component for any internet brand. It finally comes down to social, word of mouth and recommendations from friends. That is why we manage our brands through metrics to understand if we are doing well enough to be recommended. All these things work together to make that happen.

It is interesting you have a perspective that we spend more on traditional in India specifically because we do not even have all the users online in the country. In India, if all you do is online advertising then you are cutting out a huge part of the market because they have not yet come online. The traditional marketing that we are using to entice Indians to come online is not specific enough.

So, that is the critique I would give to our campaign in India. How are we actually converting users from their environment over sharing the Yahoo! values? What is it that they do? How do they get online? What is the first thing that they need to do? Is it communication? Is it mail? What is our offering? That is what we are trying to improve.

afaqs!: What about privacy issues? How is Yahoo! handling that?

Steele: Privacy is becoming increasingly important to know what consumers want to share with others and what they don't. When consumers give us permission then we can feed them with better content. When they don't that is okay too.

Our privacy practices have been among the best in the industry when it comes to privacy in terms of how we handle customer data, how we protect them in giving them choice.