Yahoo announced a new ad delivery platform it says will help marketers
better match consumers with the goods and services they’re most interested
in. The Internet giant said its patent-pending Yahoo SmartAds is powered by
leading behavioral, demographic and geographic targeting capabilities.
For example, if a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo Autos and has
selected San Francisco as their default location in Yahoo Weather, Yahoo’s
SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time that
showcases a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer
information and current lease rates.
Yahoo said this provides a relevant
experience to the user and allows the marketer to reach a user who is more
likely to become a customer.
Also, Yahoo said it would work with advertisers and agencies to make the
service more useful. For example, the SmartAds platform allows advertisers
and agencies to design a single set of individual creative components,
provide Yahoo with that artwork and a feed to their entire database of
offers, then allow Yahoo’s SmartAds technology to automatically generate the
hundreds – if not thousands – of unique ad combinations based on those
components.
The idea is to help advertisers and agencies scale to take full advantage
of all of Yahoo’s audience-targeting capabilities while maintaining control
over how their brand is presented.
“Yahoo!’s SmartAds gives marketers what they want from online
advertising: the ability to deliver customized marketing messages to
consumers, and still engage very large audiences with their brand,” said
Todd Teresi, Yahoo’s senior vice president of display marketplaces, in a
statement.
“By enabling marketers to reach consumers on a more tailored
basis and helping creative agencies support those customized campaigns, we
can provide an even more engaging, relevant online experience to the more
than 500 million users of Yahoo branded products and services,” said Teresi
Yahoo said it’s taking a phased approach to the SmartAds platform, making
it available first on its owned and operated properties to travel industry
advertisers in the U.S. The company has plans to expand it to additional
vertical industries over the coming months and, in the future, deliver SmartAds on its broader network of sites.
In testing conducted on Yahoo FareChase, the company said SmartAds
generally resulted in click through rates of two to three times higher than
static, non-customized display ads using the same targeting and placement.