Grow existing traffic, monetize through innovative ADVERTISING. Most of all, keep your userbase trusting and preferring Yahoo! products. Have several independe

Grow existing traffic, monetize through innovative ADVERTISING. Most of all, keep your userbase trusting and preferring Yahoo! products. Have several independent advertising R&D units, each of which operate independently and can take big risks on small portions of Yahoo! traffic. As other commentators have noticed, Yahoo! has a strong brand as a middle-brow internet presence. A lot of tech-unsavvy users think of Yahoo! as a friendly, trustworthy internet presence. They have a lot of traffic through mail, and Messenger is a strong product too. They should keep spinning out products for tech-unsavvy users, to keep and grow their traffic, and to strengthen their brand as the friendly, safe choice. They should acquire and/or brand friendly products as Yahoo! Risk is minimized on this front because safe, friendly choices are made to grow traffic and engagement. On the R&D side, they should focus on innovating in the advertising space, without turning off their users. They should advertising while driving traffic from Yahoo! to Yahoo! properties as much as possible. The innovation and the risks come in the approach to advertising. Big picture thinkers, mavericks, etc. can each have separate skunk-works labs that they can incubate new approaches to advertising. Luckily, each advertising R&D unit can test new advertising models on small portions of Yahoo! traffic.