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Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is the highest paid chief in new media: SNL Kagan
MUMBAI: Internet major Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is the highest paid CEO among new media companies according to SNL Kagan. She made $36.6 million last year out of which $35 million was stock and option awards.
At the bottom of the rankings, meanwhile, were Mayer‘s former boss Google CEO Larry Page and LiveDeal CEO Jon Isaac, who both received total compensation of $1.
According to SNL Kagan, Mayer easily surpassed all rival executives in the new media space in terms of total compensation.
Mayer‘s year was characterised by a hands-on push to lead Yahoo‘s turnaround strategy. Long before the company was doing things such as angling for a far younger user base with its $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition it was already in the midst of a major turnaround strategy overseen by Mayer. That strategy included a shakeup of Yahoo‘s top executive team.
Meanwhile, Yahoo also culled certain low-performing noncore assets such as Yahoo! Korea and a Chinese music service, all while stepping up an M&A strategy that saw Yahoo acquire such companies as video chat startup OnTheAir and mobile startup Stamped, while it eyed Summly, the news summarisation startup it ultimately bought in March 2013. In those dizzying 5.5 months, Yahoo additionally signed cross-promotional content deals with ‘Us Weekly‘ and ‘Rolling Stone‘ publisher Wenner Media and with NBC Sports Group, of Comcast Corp.‘s NBCUniversal Media LLC, and it overhauled both its Yahoo! Mail service, optimising it for Apple Inc iOS, Microsoft Windows 8 and Google Android mobile devices, doing much the same with a social-first revamp of its Flickr app.
Now-former CFO Timothy Morse presaged the Mayer era just as the executive took the reins, telling analysts on a July 17, 2012, earnings call that under Mayer, Yahoo would focus on bettering its technology, content offerings, mobile presence and ties with social players such as Facebook Inc. The company subsequently disclosed in August 2012 that Mayer was at work re-evaluating Yahoo‘s growth and acquisition strategy with an eye potentially toward investment rather than unquestioningly returning cash to shareholders. By April 2013, Mayer was calling that focus shift a "build, buy and partner," as she reiterated the company‘s previously stated commitment to M&A activity and to a robust mobile strategy.
Mayer‘s approach seemed to pay off for Yahoo in 2012, as the company ended the year with fourth-quarter earnings results reflecting Yahoo‘s first revenue growth in four years. All the ambitious strategising and execution, furthermore, was undertaken as Mayer gave birth to her first child right in the middle of her 2012 tenure as CEO.
Coming in behind Mayer in terms of CEO pay was eBay CEO John Donahoe, who likewise saw the bulk of his salary come in the form of equity-based compensation. Donahoe‘s base salary was $970,353, while he recorded roughly $25.7 million in stock and option awards, $2.8 million in non-equity incentive compensation and $160,420 in other salary, for a total of roughly $29.7 million.
Although Donahoe‘s 2012 was not quite as headline-friendly as Mayer‘s, he also led his company at a time of significant growth. EBay shares opened 2012 by ending the first day of trading 3 January with a value of $31.34 and climbed to close 31 December, 2012, at $51.00, a massive 57.3 per cent rise for the year.
EBay ended the year with meaningful revenue growth, capping off a year that saw the company transform its PayPal unit from an e-commerce transaction option to a bona fide real-world rival to traditional payment systems.
Donahoe was followed in the rankings by Vistaprint NV CEO Robert Keane and Expedia Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who also had the distinction of recording the largest bonus out of the top 10 CEOs by compensation, with a $3 million payout on top of his $1 million base salary, $895,000 in other salary and roughly $10.4 million in stock and option awards. In fact, just one CEO in the entire new media sector, according to SNL Kagan, got a bigger bonus than Khosrowshahi: IAC/InterActiveCorp chief Gregory Blatt, who received a $3.5 million bonus, contributing to $4.6 million in total compensation, which did not qualify him for the top 10.
Overall, the average total compensation for the top 25 new media CEOs in 2012 was roughly $9.3 million. Not making the top 25 were such high-profile executives as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Apple CEO Tim Cook made the top 25 but not the top 10, with his roughly $4.2 million in total compensation.
Applications
Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
