Yahoo loses its CMO as its advertising business continues to stumble
Yahoo has lost its Media and Marketing Chief, Kathy Savitt, to Hollywood studio STX entertainment. Another exit from Yahoo signals the problems the company is in. Yahoo wants to be a serious media company but revenue from the company's core display advertising business fell in four out of the five past quarters. Yahoo's share of the US display-ad market is expected to slip to 4.6% this year, down from 5.5% in 2014, according to eMarketer. Shares of Yahoo have fallen nearly 40% this year as Alibaba's stock has also sagged.  
Remember Yahoo? The dotcom 1.0 survivor with big plans to expand aggressively into media with high profile hires like Katie Couric and David Pogue?

Well, it may not be working out as planned. Kathy Savitt, the chief marketing officer and head of media at Yahoo since 2012, said today that she is leaving the company to join the independent studio STX Entertainment.

"We appreciate her contributions to Yahoo over the past three years and wish her well," a Yahoo spokesperson said in an email. "While we don't have specific details to share at this time, we have strong leaders in both Yahoo's media and marketing organizations who will continue to drive the business forward."

This may all sound kind of insidery, but for Yahoo, Savitt was a big deal, and her departure suggests a shift in the company’s media strategy is coming. Savitt led the company's marketing and audience development strategies, and was also in charge of editorial and video content for sites like Yahoo News, Finance, Sports, and the so-called digital magazines. In the past few years, Yahoo under Savitt has made a huge push to broaden its news and content offerings to become a media destination. But unlike the new new media darlings you hear so much about—the BuzzFeeds, Business Insiders, and Vices of the world—Yahoo has focused on, well, keeping it old school, poaching talent from legacy publications like The New York Times, Time, and ABC.

In 2013, Yahoo hired big-name legacy journalists including former Times deputy news editorMegan Liberman, Times magazine chief political reporter Matt Bai, Times tech columnist David Pogue, and ABC News anchor and talk show host Katie Couric. Earlier this year, it tapped Martha Nelson, a veteran editor from Time Inc., to become its global editor-in-chief. Meanwhile, its upstart competitors have invested in tech, young talent, and experimentation, even as the same legacy publishers from which Yahoo has poached are having to play catch-up with the startups building the future of media online.

Savitt’s departure may be an indication that the company may be looking to go a different direction as its advertising business continues to stumble. Despite Yahoo's bet, the future of media doesn't look a lot like its past.