Yahoo! launches SmartAds ad platform, travel advertisers initial beneficiaries

Yahoo! Inc. has announced the launch of Yahoo! SmartAds, an advertising platform that allows marketers to deliver powerful, tailored display ads to highly targeted audiences.

Published: 02 Jul 2007

Yahoo! Inc. has announced the launch of Yahoo! SmartAds, an advertising platform that allows marketers to deliver powerful, tailored display ads to highly targeted audiences.

SmartAds combines Yahoo!’s consumer insights and rich media capabilities with new ad serving technology that automatically converts marketers’ creative campaign elements and targeted offerings into highly-customised and relevant display ads.

Yahoo! is taking a phased approach to the SmartAds platform, making it available first to travel industry advertisers in the US, with plans to expand it to additional vertical industries over the coming months.

“Yahoo!’s SmartAds gives marketers what they want from online advertising: the ability to deliver customised marketing messages to consumers, and still engage very large audiences with their brand,” said Todd Teresi, Yahoo!’s SVP of display marketplaces.

“By enabling marketers to reach consumers on a more tailored basis and helping creative agencies support those customised campaigns, we can provide an even more engaging, relevant online experience to the more than 500 million users of Yahoo!’s products and services,” said Teresi.

Yahoo! SmartAds is powered by Yahoo!’s leading behavioural, 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.

In addition, Yahoo!’s patent-pending 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. This helps 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, according to the company.

In testing conducted on Yahoo! FareChase, SmartAds generally resulted in click through rates of two to three times higher than static, non-customised display ads using the same targeting and placement.

“Yahoo! SmartAds furthers the company’s long-term advertising and publishing vision: To build the industry’s leading advertising and publishing ecosystem – both on and off Yahoo!’s network – and transform how advertisers connect to and engage with their customers,” stated the company.

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