Yahoo has released a series of three new search and display ad products allowing advertisers to better reach their target consumers. The announcement was made today during Yahoo’s keynote presentation at the Interactive Advertising Bureau conference in Orlando.
“There’s a big opportunity in today’s economic climate where we’re finding advertisers putting a focus on maximizing ROI and maximizing the value they’re getting from their ad dollars, which makes sense,” David Zinman, VP and GM of display advertising at Yahoo, told DMNews. “All of the announcements we made today are about increasing the performance of online advertising.”
The Search Retargeting tool allows advertisers to offer display ad placement throughout the Yahoo Network based on consumer search patterns.
Enhanced Retargeting for display ads incorporates behavioral targeting by allowing brands to personalize messaging within a display ad in the Yahoo Network based on which sites and what type of searches a consumer has performed.
Finally, the Enhanced Targeting service will allow advertisers using Yahoo Search ads to more specifically target consumers by time of day or week demographic. Brands can vary their bids on various segments depending on who they’d like to reach and when. This product will be available in March.
Yahoo started testing these products through a pilot program at the beginning of Q4 2008. The University of Phoenix was one of the first adopters of the products. Zinman would not name other clients, but said there are many.
“Yahoo has great engagement with its userbase and learns a lot about who uses what and what they’re interested in,” Zinman said. “This enables advertisers to utilize that information when running search ads and the performance of their search ad dollars [improves].”
Zinman said by making announcements around capabilities not available elsewhere, Yahoo hopes to increase its market share and the ability to attract ad dollars.
This news comes just days after the company released its Rich Ads in Search program, allowing major brands to add rich media to their paid search ads.
It also has been reported that the company is set to announce an executive reorganization under CEO’s Carol Bartz’s leadership.
