Cannes Lions: Yahoo COO Matt Sanchez on How Marketing and Media Are Being Rewritten in Real Time
Business of MarketingShow Notes
The rules of marketing and media are being rewritten in real time. Recorded live at Cannes Lions, John Horsley sits down with Matt Sanchez, Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo, for an in-depth conversation about what comes next for one of the internet’s most recognisable companies, and for the industry built around it. Yahoo reaches nine in ten Americans every month. But scale alone is no longer enough. Matt talks about Yahoo’s transformation, its investment in AI and Scout, and a future in which people increasingly expect technology not simply to give them links, but to understand what they want, provide an answer and help them get things done. That shift has profound implications for marketers, publishers and brands. If AI increasingly sits between businesses and their customers, what happens to the traditional customer journey? What becomes of search, traffic and the open web? How should publishers be rewarded when their expertise helps power AI? And what happens to advertising when an audience may be smaller, but arrives with dramatically greater intent? Matt argues that we are moving away from an internet built around scale, volume and clicks towards one built around quality, utility, trust and outcomes. That means publishers creating genuinely differentiated content and building useful experiences around it. It means advertisers understanding intent rather than simply buying reach. And it means marketers confronting a world in which AI can increasingly handle tactical workflows while humans concentrate on strategy, creativity and the connections machines might otherwise miss. The conversation also goes inside the changing role of the CMO: growing pressure to demonstrate commercial outcomes, the influence of CFOs and procurement, the importance of brand in driving growth, and why companies willing to recognise just how much has changed may have an extraordinary opportunity ahead of them. And underneath all of it is trust. As AI becomes a guide, researcher and increasingly an agent acting on our behalf, the businesses we trust with our questions, data and decisions will matter more than ever. This is much more than a conversation about the reinvention of Yahoo. It’s a conversation about the reinvention of marketing, media and the internet itself. Recorded live at Cannes Lions. The Business of Marketing. Conversations That Matter.
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