Yahoo, whose fortunes depend on selling online advertising, could some day offer versions without ads, its CEO Terry Semel said at a conference.
“I think there’s an opportunity in some time where there will be some businesses where (advertising) doesn’t exist,” Semel said during the event.
Semel declined to offer any specifics and cautioned that Yahoo’s subscription businesses have not amassed enough paid users to justify an ad-free environment. Semel also did not elaborate on whether Yahoo would offer an ad-free version of its entire site, but said individual businesses are under consideration.
Reuters: Yahoo is also keeping a close eye on the social networking space, according to Semel. And funnily, in this report on the same talk, here’s what he says: “The business is advertising,” Semel said, recalling when he first joined Yahoo in 2001. “I looked at it like a (broadcast) network and how do we advertise.”
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