YHOO: Yahoo buys mobile marketing startup; criticism of strategy picks up

Yahoo buys mobile marketing startup; criticism of strategy picks up • 7:08 PM

• Yahoo's (YHOO) latest acquisition is Sparq, developer of a mobile ad platform that embeds links to digital marketing content within apps.
• As has been the case with many other acquisitions, Sparq's service will shut down, and its team will join Yahoo. Yahoo has plenty of apps that could make use of Sparq's underlying ad technology.
• Meanwhile, scrutiny of Yahoo's product and content strategy has grown following last week's firing of COO Henrique de Castro (followed by the splitting up of de Castro's responsibilities among other execs), and the resignation of seasoned editor-in-chief Jai Singh.
• Pando Daily's Sarah Lacy observes Yahoo's media team might not be thrilled with Marissa Mayer's decision (following de Castro's firing) to put Yahoo's media and editorial functions under the control of marketing chief Kathy Savitt. She adds Mayer "may have taken the things that ailed Yahoo – a distracted, bloated focus across dozens of products and industries where it was good but not great – and made that problem worse."
• Also: Jeff Bercovici observes unique U.S. visitors to Tumblr's site (per comScore) have been roughly flat since last spring. It's worth noting comScore's data doesn't include traffic from Tumblr's mobile apps, which has continued to grow.

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