Yahoo Layoffs On Dec. 10 & At $11 Yahoo Now Significantly Undervalued?

AllThingsD reports that Yahoo’s previously announced 10 percent reduction in force (layoffs) is set to begin on December 10. However, the post also says that chief Yahoo, CEO Jerry Yang, is not considering leaving his post for now. (NOTE: See update, Jerry Yang Stepping Down As CEO; Resuming Chief Yahoo Role).

Yahoo stock is hovering between $10 and $11, off $23 from its previous high during the height of the MicroHoo drama earlier this year. But this price is probably more of a statement about investor anxiety about Yahoo’s future rather than any kind of rational assessment of the company’s actual value.

On that latter point, AdAge discusses the differening perceptions of Yahoo from Wall Street and Madison Avenue. While Wall Street is discounting Yahoo, advertisers still see tremendous value:

“Advertisers are looking at where’s the traffic, volume and value is today. And today is very positive for advertisers at Yahoo,” said Chris Moloney, chief marketing officer at Scottrade, which in August was the top online-ad spender, according to TNS Media Intelligence. “Google is considered to be the 800-pound gorilla of the internet but it doesn’t have content the way Yahoo does. It receives a massive volume of traffic.”

The article also cites other areas where, despite perceptions, Yahoo is either being highly innovative or exceeding rivals:

Consider, for a moment, Yahoo’s recent achievements: Its Olympics site, Yahoo Olympics, dominated the games in August, bringing in more visitors in the U.S. than NBC and Microsoft’s NBCOlympics.com. In September, Yahoo Video overtook MySpace TV as the second-ranked video site to Google’s YouTube. Some of its recent content initiatives have borne fruit. Its original entertainment show “Primetime in No Time” is getting a million views a day. Its business show, “TechTicker” on Yahoo Finance is getting 450,000 views a day, which compares favorably with CNBC. The first intimate photos of President-elect Barack Obama and his family on election night appeared on Yahoo’s photo-sharing site, Flickr.

What all this shows is that despite all the drama and second-guessing, users and lots of major advertisers don’t really care about who’s in or who’s out at Yahoo or about its share price — as long as impressions are delivered and traffic is maintained.