86 THE POWER OF COLLABORATION
Yahoo Mail’s Harish Sarma talks to Adrian Pennington about the ‘untouched territory’ of broadcaster emails
“At the moment, emails are loosely linked to a calendar, a planner and/or a to-do list. Moreover, today’s email calendars are effectively a set of time blocks with text in them,” says Yahoo Mail Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships Harish Sarma, who is speaking at today’s IBC Conference session ‘The Power of Collaboration: How strategic partnerships are transforming broadcasting’. Imagine instead if that entire experience was
reinvented with the end consumer in mind. In that world, the broadcaster or IP owner could have a more meaningful conversation with its customers. For example, a marketing email highlighting upcoming events or shows could be integrated with a calendar feature to enhance discovery and attendance.
“This is completely untouched territory. There’s
no real solution that exists for this yet, and that means there’s an opportunity. The key to this opportunity is changing the conversation, which starts here at IBC,” he adds. Describing recent changes at Yahoo Mail as “an important part of the next chapter for the brand,” Sarma says the 30-year-old business operates in a fi eld – email – that hasn’t seen innovation in decades.
“Email is one of the highest utility digital
products you can have in terms of the value it provides each person, but it also drives a tremendous amount of angst and, frankly, it doesn’t feel like people get a lot of joy from emails. Yahoo Mail’s mission is to change the consumer experience with email. Can we keep the good stuff, eliminate the bad and change the game?” As a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley who left to join the National Basketball Association (NBA), Sarma thrives when working out of the box. In 2019, he was recruited by Bytedance to head the content business development department at TikTok. The platform was already a client of the NBA and Sarma doubled down on this, bringing more of the NBA’s content onto it. “We ultimately built out the content function within TikTok not just for sports but also entertainment, lifestyle and gaming. Prior to this, content was categorised, but impact was evaluated based on engagement. Content that drives virality doesn’t necessarily translate to what people want to be watching. It could just be what is garnering a lot of attention at a moment in time. Over time, we learned what we
“There’s a misperception that email is for the older generation and our job is to debunk a lot of that because the data doesn’t support it”
EMAIL REVOLUTION Sarma will be joined on today’s panel by executives from Snap, Sling TV and Sky, which may give some clues as to how Yahoo Mail is addressing a media and entertainment audience. The product is changing too. The fi rst of many expected revamps is a catch-up feature to help users tackle inbox overload. AI-powered summaries provide scannable email previews, giving users the option to ‘delete’ or ‘keep in inbox’ with a simple tap. The fi nal reward? A celebratory screen for users to see how many emails they deleted, and how fast they did it. “The idea is very simple. Can we transform the email experience to help users fi lter the information they need from details they do not? The catch-up feature is an AI-powered triage system that we made into a game,” he explains. Announced alongside the news that nearly
Harish Sarma, Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships, Yahoo Mail
really needed to build was silos of high-quality content that met the niche needs of each user across content categories.”
half of Yahoo Mail users are Gen Z or Millennial, the feature rolled out to Yahoo Mail users on 12 June 2025 alongside an exclusive partnership with comedian, musician, actor and TikTok creator Morgan Jay and with streetwear brand Anti Social Social Club. Snapping this offer up, Comcast has already begun transitioning all
Comcast.net email accounts to Yahoo Mail’s AI-driven platform. “There’s a misperception that email is for the older generation and our job is to debunk a lot of that because the data doesn’t support it. Knowing that nearly half of our users are Gen Z or Millennial is, for most people, surprising to hear. However, we know we can leverage that to enhance the user experience,” Sarma continues. “Another myth is the idea that email is going to die out and be replaced by something much more effi cient. Another way to look at it is: ‘What if we can evolve email to work for today’s users?’ We envision an experience where email can do more of the work of organising your personal life for you. We want to change the conversation around how email has worked, and been used, for decades,” he concludes.
‘The Power of Collaboration: How strategic partnerships are transforming broadcasting’ takes place today from 12:30-13:15 in Conference Room 1.
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