Tag: Yahoo

Yahoo Enlists Google To Help With Its Search Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Earlier today, Yahoo announced it has reached a non-exclusive deal with Google to display the latter’s search results and ads in its own services, both on mobile and desktop devices. Yahoo has a similar arrangement with Microsoft’s Bing in place, but it states that the new Google partnership will only be supplementary to its existing deal with Bing. Yahoo will have near total control over when or where to pull in Google’s search results or ads, but it remains unclear whether advertisers would have the option to opt out of having their Google search ads shown on Yahoo sites.

Market Impact
According to a comScore report released in August, Google dominated the U.S. desktop search market with nearly 64% market share, whereas Yahoo’s search network trailed far behind with only 12.7% market share. Therefore, it makes sense for Yahoo to team up with the biggest search engine on the planet in order to leverage some of Google’s search technologies and ad products to better manage search queries and serve ads. For Google, this deal helps to further expand the reach of its search ads, which in turn increases its revenue. Overall, the search market now faces the challenge of losing search to apps on mobile devices, and we expect to see more consolidating partnerships like this as search giants continue to battle with this issue.

 

Source: Business Insider

 

Yahoo Adds Support For Native Video Ads On Third-Party Apps

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Yahoo will start helping developers add native video ads into their apps, the company announced on Wednesday during its Mobile Developer Conference in New York City. Mobile developers will soon get tools on Yahoo’s ad platform necessary for integrating video ads that fit their apps’ design.

What Brands Should Do
According to a recent study by Nielsen and Sharethrough, native video ads perform better than other video ads including pre-roll ads. For brands that wish to spread its branded video content in the increasingly app-centric mobile ecosystem, Yahoo’s new addition could be helpful in increasing the reach while simplifying the process.

Source: TechCrunch

Yahoo Raises The Stakes On Fantasy Sports

Posted on by Lab Team

Yahoo is bringing real money to its popular Fantasy Sports app, expanding from its previous season-long contests to daily and weekly ones, launching the new Yahoo Daily Fantasy product for desktop and mobile devices on Wednesday in the 45 states where virtual sports wagering is legal. Users can reportedly pay up to $600 a day, and Yahoo charges 10% of each contest entry fee.

Fantasy sports have been gaining momentum in recent years. A recent survey by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association reports that over 56.8 million people participated in fantasy sports in 2014, growing 40% from 2013. As fantasy sports continue to grow, the audience it congregates seems ripe for relevant brands to capitalize on through sponsorships and partnerships.

 

Source: CNET

Yahoo Catches Up With Google With Actionable Mobile Search

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Next Web

Yesterday, Yahoo announced a new partnership with Oracle that aims to prompt users updating Java software to set Yahoo as the default search engine. And Today, Yahoo follows up its efforts in pushing Yahoo Search with a revamp mobile search results page that offers richer content and quicker access to take actions. For example, a search for a specific restaurant now pulls up relevant info about the restaurant, as well as yelp reviews, all designed to be directly helpful in the context of specific queries. Of course, this is nothing really revolutionary—Google has been doing that for years now—but it is a smart move for Yahoo to catch up and put mobile search first, especially now that mobile search usage has officially surpassed desktop.

 

IPG Lab + Yahoo: Giving Consumers The Personalization They Want

Posted on by Lab Team

New research study details consumer expectations of and reactions to personalized ad experiences.

Consumers are immersed in digital content and ads across a range of devices on a daily basis, creating a challenging and cluttered environment within which brands must try to stand out. Increasingly, personalization is emerging as the tool to help advertisers break through the noise and forge consumer connections.  To help advertisers more effectively leverage personalization, we teamed with IPG Media Lab, the creative technology arm of IPG Mediabrands, to create “Going Deeper: What Consumers Really Want from Personalized Ads,” a study of how individuals react to and feel about ad experiences that are tailored to them.

For marketers looking to strike the right balances when serving consumers personalized ads, we identified four key areas of focus:

  1. Do mobile better – Consumers expectations for personalization are highest on mobile devices, particularly when it comes to delivering information quickly and geo-located.
  2. Understand consumer preferences – Consumers respond best to ads that are tailored to where they are and what they do online.
  3. Understand the dimensions that impact personalization – The younger the consumer, the stronger the desire for personalization, especially for big ticket purchases.
  4. Put personalization to work against KPIs – Advertisers that utilized personalization saw increases in overall favorability and purchase intent.

Interested in learning more? Be sure to read the full study. And if you’re ready to put personalization to work for your brand, contact your Yahoo Account Manager.

Download the Going Deeper Presentation Deck Here

CES 2015: The Yahoo Experience And A Conversation With BlackBerry

Posted on by Lab Team

Today IPG Media Lab took a detour from the Las Vegas Convention Center to walk through the “Yahoo Experience” at the Cosmopolitan. Of particular note was Yahoo’s proprietary content recognition and delivery service for Smart TV. Otherwise known as ACR, the technology has been around for a bit, but it’s at the forefront of Yahoo’s content strategy for 2015. The company has a footprint of 4.4 million televisions, which gives it a sample size 50 times that of Nielsen. (And of course, if you have the Yahoo Sports mobile app open, you can get the same ad on both devices, and that user data will connect across all Yahoo properties — including Tumblr.) Yahoo is moving toward this strategy because it yields more eyeballs, better ad revenue, and more interesting data.

Next door to the Yahoo Experience, Pogue interviewed BlackBerry CEO John Chen about the future of the phone company. While not the mobile powerhouse it used to be, Chen insisted their phone business is still profitable, and  intends to expand distribution in 2015. And despite the lower profile of BlackBerry’s phone, its QNX automotive system is used in 50 million in-car systems, and possesses a 50% market share. Over in the North Hall, QNX has featured a Maserati with its infotainment and telematics systems working in full throttle. As the car is a huge story at CES 2015, expect this sector of BlackBerry to keep growing.

How Yahoo Is Using Its Native Ad Network

Posted on by Lab Team

One of the biggest advantages native advertising has against traditional banners and pop-ups is their subtlety. And Yahoo is taking full advantage of their ad network to extend these ads outside its own properties to help other publishers promote their own stories. Featured as sponsored links, these “Stream Ads” from Yahoo will appear in the content recommendation box on sites like Vox Media and CBS Interactive, with more publishers expected to join in the near future.

Yahoo Woos Small Businesses With Revamped Web Store

Posted on by Lab Team

When it comes to online retailing, Yahoo might not have the same clout as Amazon or eBay. But that doesn’t mean it has stopped trying. In fact, it has quietly unveiled a revamped version of Yahoo Stores that is specifically targeted at small retailers, which puts it in direct competition with similar platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace, Etsy, and Weebly. To stand out, Yahoo clearly needs to leverage its other existing online resources into better assisting small retailers build customized online storefronts.

Yahoo Sites Start Integrating Ads From Tumblr

Posted on by Lab Team

Sponsored posts on Tumblr for brands like Lexus, Lipton, and “Hunger Games” will start showing up on Yahoo sites. This cross-platform integration makes perfect sense, given Yahoo’s continuous efforts in integrating the microblogging platform it purchased last year into its business. Plus, for the image-heavy digital magazines sites like Yahoo Tech, Tumblr already serves as the editorial publishing tool for these sites and has been used to create those sites’ ads since their introduction.

Yahoo Buying Mobile Start-Up Flurry For Its Data

Posted on by Lab Team

Yahoo has confirmed to be acquiring Flurry, a mobile ad platform with real-time bidding feature. Following a slew of mobile start-up acquisitions, however, Yahoo’s interest in Flurry might be more than just for their mobile products and resources. Along with its ad exchange platform, Flurry also offers a mobile analytics platform popular with app developers, with nearly half a million apps on iOS and Android employing Flurry’s tool to track how people are using their apps. Therefore, Flurry hoards a considerable amount of the valuable behavioral data that Yahoo desperately needs to jump-start its mobile business.