As we reported last week, Yahoo hosted its first “Infront” before the upfront on Tuesday evening, during which the web portal sought to “educate” roughly 1,000 marketers and media buyers on the merits of shifting more ad dollars from the traditional outlets to the digital ones – namely Yahoo. 
In place of the bombast and glitz the TV networks put on for their upfronts, Yahoo kept the proceedings fairly dry, the WSJ reported. And rather than promote new initiatives, the presentation, held at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway, featured CEO Terry Semel touting Yahoo’s seven million newsgroups and the Yahoo Answers site, where advertisers can target people asking questions about specific subjects. Semel also pointed out that Yahoo has been doing IPTV in Japan for awhile, AdAge reported, and is working with AT&T domestically on its IPTV program.
Following Semel was Wenda Harris Millard, Yahoo’s chief sales officer, who wanted to make sure the attendees did not forget that 17 percent of media usage is online, while only 6 percent of media dollars are spent there, which she mentioned last week while on a panel at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit. “Clearly, [there’s a] disconnect,” she said both this week and last.
WSJ noted that the subtext of Yahoo’s Infront was a desire to protect its digital turf from incursions by TV networks, which have begun putting many of their primetime shows online. On the other side, Yahoo is facing strenuous competition from Google in the search-ad category—all of which has led to a sharp slowdown in revenue growth and can’t afford to lose ground to the networks as well.
Related:
—@ Media Summit: Yahoo CSO: Will Host Its First ‘Infront Before The Upfront’ Next Week