Agency sources tell Del Rey that, over her first eight months at Yahoo, Mayer has ignored them to an extent other companies dependent on ad spending do not.
One source told Del Rey that De Castro will even ignore emails from top agency executives.
Back when De Castro was hired, a source told us Mayer hired to improve Yahoo's relationship with agencies. So this isn't how things are supposed to go.
Here are a couple particularly tough quotes from the story:
- "I don't know what their strategy is, but if it includes agencies then they are going to have to fix what they currently have."
- "I continue to be astonished at how lackadaisical they are in dealing with us. And not just Henrique; Marissa too. They don't think agencies are important."
For what it's worth, we've heard similar complaints from agency execs. One told us that Mayer showed up late to an important meeting with an agency boss at CES this year.
The problem with the situation is that Marissa Mayer doesn't really like working on anything other than product. She didn't at Google, and she doesn't at Yahoo.
Meanwhile, De Castro, we've heard from every ex-Googler we've asked, is a touch awkward in inter-personal situations.
At the end of Del Rey's story, there's a comment from Yahoo, in which the company says its hired an agency relations team to fix some of these issues.
That's a smart first step; but the fact is agency people have big egos, so it might not work.