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Yahoo! Inc Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer said the web portal has surpassed 800 million active monthly users, a 20 per cent increase since she joined the company in July 2012.
Attrition is also down, Mayer said in an onstage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, without providing numbers. The monthly user figure doesn't include Tumblr Inc, the blogging startup that Yahoo agreed to buy in May for $1.1 billion, she said.
Mayer's turnaround effort has so far focused on revamping web products and services, and improving worker morale. Yahoo attracted more US visitors than Google Inc during July, the first time it did so in more than two years. Still, the web portal has failed to woo more advertisers, who continue to shift budgets to Google and Facebook Inc.
"The products have to be good," Mayer said.
"Otherwise, users don't come and actually use them."
Yahoo's share of the $17.5-billion market for display ads, its core business, will slip to 7.9 per cent in 2013 from 9.2 percent last year, according to researcher eMarketer Inc. Google will climb almost three percentage points to 18 per cent, while Facebook will increase about two points to 17 per cent, eMarketer said.
Mayer has embarked on an acquisition spree that comprised at least 19 companies, including the purchase of Tumblr, as well as mobile-application makers Stamped Inc, Jybe Inc and Summly Ltd, the news-reading application created by teenager Nick D'Aloisio.
Yahoo fell one per cent to $29.19 at Wednesday's close in New York before Mayer's remarks, leaving the stock up 47 per cent this year.
