Interview: Jeff Dossett, SVP-U.S. Audience, Yahoo: His ‘Next Mount Everest’
As Jeff Dossett adroitly answered—or non-answered—the questions tossed his way in a hastily arranged interview Monday afternoon after Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) was backed into announcing his new job early, I couldn’t tell which experience helped him more: navigating Mount Everest twice or surviving Microsoft’s office politics. Either way, the new head of Yahoo’s U.S. audience business and successor to Scott Moore knows how to stay on message. At times, he sounded like a Yahoo vet, not someone starting work Nov. 10. Some excerpts: lots more after the jump..
—Succeeding Moore: When Dossett first started talking to Yahoo about a move, Moore’s job wasn’t an option. “Hilary Schneider and I, as well as the rest of the team, had been talking about a number of opportunities in the long term, where I could make the greatest contribution and where Yahoo felt it had its most important needs. With Scott Moore’s decision to move on to new opportunities, this particular opportunity emerged recently.” This is where Dossett will start at Yahoo but he’s open about his interest in other roles: “My perspective is a long-term perspective and I think, over time, I hope to have the opportunity to work in a number of different areas in Yahoo.”
—Layoffs, cost cutting: Part of the challenge for Dossett will be maintaining or increasing market position with fewer resources but he wasn’t talking numbers or specifics: “Consistent with all of the direction that has been provided by Jerry Yang, Sue Decker and Hilary Schneider, I certainly will be responsible for ensuring our U.S. audience business gets fit and gets focused, as we like to say.”
—Committed to Santa Monica?: Would Yahoo Media leave Santa Monica to save money? “I have no specific information on that but I can tell you that I plan to have an office in both Santa Monica and Sunnyvale.”
—Why leave Microsoft—and why for Yahoo?: “Each individual needs to make a decision about how they want to evolve as a person and a leader. I was looking for a new leadership challenge. ... tremendous opportunities across Yahoo. Individuals and teams have been through a fair amount of change over past year … Challenge of external marketplace, time to do new things in new ways.”
—Next Mount Everest: Couldn’t resist asking the veteran mountain climber which mountain is Yahoo. Dossett: “I think it has the variety and opportunity for experiences of a mountain like Everest, I’ll say it’s my next Mount Everest.” He couldn’t help adding: “I think we’re at the summit of the media business.”
—Playing to strengths: Dossett : The tough economic environment plays to Yahoo’s many strengths. I think we’re going to see advertisers focus their investments on the largest, most engaged audience on the web, and I think it’s a great opportunity to earn a larger share of marketers; overall ad spending.” He describes a “flight to quality” with Yahoo focusing on those online user and advertiser experiences which present the highest growth opportunities on those experiences. “We do uniquely well—and we’ll partner on the others as Yahoo under Scott’s leadership has done well.”
—Integrating with AOL?: Hah. See intro.
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Comments (1)
Nov 4, 2008 8:54 AM
Makes you wonder who else from Microsoft may be going there next.