Yahoo! Reorgs Local Markets and Commerce

The way Yahoo! breaks up business segments is always instructive — something we follow closely at The Kelsey Group as we do our best to sort out our Interactive Local Media, Marketplaces and Yellow Pages/Directional Advertising (“The Kelsey Report”) research programs.

Just as we’ve figured out what goes where — even borrowing Yahoo!’s “Marketplaces” name for our new verticals and classified program — Yahoo! decides to go in another direction. And we are left to ponder it anew.

The latest reorg basically pulls out the fast-growing Autos and Real Estate verticals from the one-stop concept of “Marketplaces” and places them under “Lifestyles,” under Scott Moore. Moore came over from MSN a couple of years ago and is a fast rising exec at Yahoo!. The reasoning, per a Yahoo! memo posted by paidContent, is that “these assets are primarily content-based, editorially driven and supported by graphical advertising, thus creating scale benefits and organizational efficiencies.” Another reason is that Yahoo! simply wants to have more focus on these key verticals.

The remaining Local Markets and Commerce segments — local, shopping, travel and personals — go into “Search,” under the giant umbrella of Vish Makhijani. Jasper Malcolmson remains the interim leader. To us, it is all a more natural alignment. But it has been just four months since the last reorg. For the sanity of our Yahoo! friends, I hope it the last one for a while.