Social is not a product for Yahoo! but a context: Nitin Mathur

On a sunny afternoon in Goa amid the Goafest fanfare, Nitin Mathur, senior marketing director, Yahoo! India, chatted with afaqs! about the online portal giant's perspective on a few relevant issues, and how Yahoo! stands apart in the marketplace.

One often hears about the increasing digital penetration and the immense potential it offers to advertisers, and wonders if the buck stops at just the measurement of penetration.

"Relevance is critical, actually. Relevance of what the audience wants is the key to advertiser interest, rather than looking at overall penetration," said Mathur.

"The Yahoo! selling perspective has changed a lot. It is more about being audience-based selling. Advertisers are asking all the right questions -- where the audience is headed and where to find them, how deeply is the audience engaged, what are they doing online, and how much time are they spending," he added.

Mathur also spoke about how Yahoo! prefers to be known as a premier digital media company, rather than a technology or a digital company, with an impetus given to content -- both media and genre.

Mathur spoke about online advertising and that Yahoo! is well-braced to meet the current needs of the advertiser.

Yahoo! has been among the leaders in the online display advertising space contributing to building brands online. It has launched interactive ad formats, enabling advertisers to enhance user experience.

"Advertisers, today, are asking for the right content in media and technology. I think Yahoo! is well-positioned to give them what they need in terms of the ability to identify and target the audience at the right time with the right message, understand the analytics of consumer behaviour, the art in terms of giving them a very large digital canvas to integrate, and express the brand positioning, and the scale," said Mathur.

Pointing out that the company allows advertisers the ability to target consumers in specific context, he cited the example of Yahoo! Cricket's association with Castrol. Castrol came in as an advertiser and integrated its Castrol Cricket Ratings within the context of Yahoo!'s cricket property, to connect with consumers online, within the context of cricket.

The company's activity in the mobile arena was also discussed.

"The strategy is very simple -- ensuring that all our leading products have tremendous potential on mobile, be it Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, or Yahoo! Cricket. We will slowly get into news on mobile, as well," said Mathur.

He said that that big focus for Yahoo! is partnerships with both handset manufacturers and operators. Mathur also reiterated the importance of creating specific experience for mobile, with particular reference to Livestand.

Livestand from Yahoo! is a digital newsstand, offering new content to consumers based on their interests. Being launched first for tablets, Livestand allows advertisers to distribute personalised content across tablets and mobile phones.

Finally, the inevitable topic of social media was raised. When asked why Yahoo!, unlike Twitter and Facebook has not explored the space as much, Mathur nixed the point saying that the company looks at social media differently.

"Social is critically important. It is not a product to us, but a context. What we are trying to do is help people grow their social graphs through our products. You will see a lot of developments in this area from Yahoo!. Most of our content properties have very deep social integrations," said Mathur.

He further added, "Social is not a destination for us. Social is something horizontal. How do we socialise Yahoo!, and how do we help people build their social graphs through Yahoo! are far more powerful than just chasing a particular destination."

According to Mathur, it is far more important to identify the phenomena of sharing by people on various social networks and leverage the business.