Yahoo's search business has been under a microscope by its investors in recent years. The company is second, with 20.4 percent of the U.S. search market, far behind market-leader Google (GOOG), which had 64.2 percent as of April, according to market research group comScore. Microsoft has 8 percent of the search market.

If Microsoft and Yahoo combined their search engines, they'd be close to owning a third of the market compared to Google, which has two-thirds. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will be interviewed on at the conference today. His company has said it is open to a deal that would help improve or increase its search business.

Yahoo has seen display advertising spending shrink, but is not planning any additional layoffs, Bartz said in the interview. "We're down like 13%, relatively, that's great," she said. "Down 15 is the new flat."

Anthony Massucci is a senior writer for DailyFinance. You may follow him on Twitter at hianthony.