901am

New Media News Every Morning

Yahoo launches SmartAds

By

yahoo_smartads.jpgYahoo! Inc. announced the launch of Yahoo! SmartAds, a new, innovative advertising platform that allows marketers to deliver powerful, tailored display ads to highly targeted audiences. SmartAds combines Yahoo!’s leading consumer insights and rich media capabilities with new ad serving technology that automatically converts marketers’ creative campaign elements and targeted offerings into highly-customized and relevant display ads.

Yahoo! SmartAds is powered by Yahoo!’s leading behavioral, demographic and geographic targeting capabilities and aim to connect users with what they are looking for based on their distinctive, expressed interests. 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. This provides a relevant experience to the user and allows the marketer to reach a user who is likely to become a customer.

Originally posted on July 2, 2007 @ 11:09 am

Yahoo! restructures US sales team

By

yahoo_ad.jpg After appointing a new CEO and acquiring Rivals.com, global Internet company Yahoo! Will now combine its Search and Display advertising sales teams in the US, and has appointed David Karnstedt, currently senior vice president of Yahoo!’s Search sales business, to lead the unified organization as Head of North American Sales.

As a result of these changes, Yahoo!’s integrated sales organization will be the first of its kind to offer the widest selection of advertising products coupled with the broadest scale of search and display inventory to customers.

“By taking a more holistic approach to advertising sales, Yahoo! Will become a more consultative seller, which should make buying complete solutions easier for our customers across Yahoo! and our partner network,” said Karnstedt. “These moves will also enable our world class sales team to more effectively meet the needs of our advertisers – not just today but well into the future.”

Yahoo! is moving aggressively to build-on its long-term leadership position in display advertising, while further strengthening its strong position in search.

Originally posted on June 25, 2007 @ 1:10 pm

Yahoo to acquire sports network Rivals.com

By

Yahoo is buying Rivals.com, an online network catering to fans of college and high school sports, a move that aims to place Yahoo at the helm of US sports market.

Since it was founded in 2001, Tennessee-based Rivals.com has built up an avid fan base of hardcore sports enthusiasts, operating on 105 college team sites and about 48 regional high school sites. To date, Rivals have more than 180,000 subscribers who regularly track local sports through the site.

“We are very serious about leading in the media space,” said Scott Moore, senior vice president for news and information at Yahoo. “This deal will help us connect with the college and high school sports fan.”

Besides bringing Yahoo a base of 2 million to 2.5 million fans of high school and college football and basketball, the deal is also one of the series of developments that analysts are expecting from Yahoo, following the management changes that happened this week.

The financial aspects of the deal was not disclosed but sources say that Yahoo brought it up to around $100M.

Originally posted on June 21, 2007 @ 7:30 am

MySpace for 30% of Yahoo?

By

Times Online (UK) reports that “News Corporation has discussed swapping MySpace, its internet social networking unit, with Yahoo! in return for a 30 per cent stake in the enlarged group.”

BloggingStocks is saying that this is a favorable deal for Rupert Murdoch and a questionable one for Yahoo.

If Murdoch could complete this deal, he would realize a 21x increase in the value of his $580 million investment back in the summer of 2005. Yahoo was worth $37 billion yesterday, 25% of which would be worth $12.3 billion. And the nice thing for Murdoch about getting stock would be that he would not need to pay tax on the gain until he cashed out the Yahoo shares.

But for Yahoo, the deal would be of questionable value. As Murdoch pointed out in a recent interview, Facebook is grabbing share from MySpace. From this comment, I infer that Murdoch is not eager to or does not know how to adapt MySpace to regain the competitive initiative. Moreover, Yahoo is so stressed out trying to compete with Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), that it will not be able to devote the resources needed to keep up with Facebook.

Editor’s question: If you’re Yahoo, would you go for this deal?

Originally posted on June 20, 2007 @ 10:18 am

Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 set to launch this Friday

By

yahoogo.jpgThe Internet on the mobile phone will take another big step forward with the launch of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0. The service will be available in the U.S. and localized versions in 13 countries. By the end of July, it will be available to more than 200 different mobile phones in the U.S., expanding to more than 400 by the end of tis year. It will also be pre-loaded on new devices from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC.

“Today’s launch signals to the world that Yahoo! Go is ready for primetime. With the tremendous consumer response to date we believe that Yahoo! Go will be a catalyst for broader adoption of the mobile Internet,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life Division, Yahoo!. “People want easy access to the Internet on their mobile phones, and Yahoo! Go 2.0 offers content, access and answers wherever you are.”

Originally posted on June 20, 2007 @ 9:39 am