Posts filed under 'Yahoo! News'

Introducing All-You-Can-Eat Web Hosting

Beginning today, Yahoo! Web Hosting has gone “unlimited”

Editor’s Note: If you have a web site or want to build one—and since you’re doing search marketing, we’re guessing that’s probably the case—Yahoo! has good news for you. Starting today, our colleagues in Yahoo! Small Business are offering unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited e-mail storage to their web hosting customers.

Yahoo! Small Business customers have told us loud and clear that they want getting online to be as easy and painless as possible. Instead of worrying about things like, “How many visitors can my site handle?” and “How many pages can I build?,” small business owners want to focus on growing their businesses and driving traffic to their sites, feeling comfortable knowing their hosting package will grow with their business.

The new Yahoo! Web Hosting offers unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, unlimited email storage and 1,000 email accounts—all for $11.95 a month. For the very large majority of small business owners who want a professional-looking site in hours, the decision to choose Yahoo! has suddenly become much easier.

Don’t know the first thing about web design? No sweat. Every Yahoo! Small Business service includes award-winning, easy-to-use web site design tools that can help business owners with little or no technical experience to quickly and easily build great-looking sites. You’ll also get a free domain name and 24/7 customer support, plus your satisfaction is guaranteed for 30 days. And if that wasn’t enough, Yahoo! Small Business automatically optimizes your web site and submits it to top search engines (I can think of a pretty good one) to help customers find your business.

Existing web hosting customers have already received an email invitation with the option to migrate to this new plan. If you’re not an existing customer and you want to get your business online, please visit Yahoo!’s Web Hosting site for more information.

Now go spread out. There’s plenty of room!

— Guy Yalif, Director, Web Hosting Products, Yahoo! Small Business

Calling all Search Superstars!

Searching for Searchlight Award Winners

Now that the holidays are behind us, we can all start to focus on the next seasonal reality…awards season. It seems that just about every industry now has their own awards showcase (when it’s not getting cancelled due to the writers’ strike).

So why should all of us in the search world be left out in the cold? Well, I’m happy to announce that our time has come. On February 12, we’ll be holding the 3rd Annual Yahoo! Searchlight Award showcase in New York City. If you haven’t been to it in the past, it’s a must-attend event. You’ll get to hear the insights and strategies behind four of the best search marketing campaigns from 2007. One winner will be crowned the 2008 Searchlight Award winner. (Previous winners include Avenue A/Razorfish and RPA.)

You’ll also hear a great keynote from one of the most digitally savvy and forward-thinking agency minds. Rob Norman, CEO of Group M Interaction, will kick us off with his thoughts on what’s hot in 2008 and beyond. Rob is as witty as he is brilliant, so we’re really excited to have him this year.

We also have four great panelists who will be helping the audience decide who deserves the award. The panel will question the presenters, offering their own insights and providing their own analysis of the work.

Our panelists include the following:
Abbey Klaassen - Digital Editor, Advertising Age
Kevin Ryan - Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies
Greg Sterling - Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
Brian Morrissey - Senior Reporter, Adweek

Greg and Brian have been with us since we kicked off the Searchlight Awards and we warmly welcome them back. We are also excited to have Abbey Klaasen and the inimitable Kevin Ryan join us for the first time as panelists.

Do you have a campaign from 2007 that you’d like to submit for consideration? Would you like to see your agency featured in a full-page print advertisement in one of the trade publications? Do you want the glory and exclusivity to boast that you are the best of the best? (Yes, yes and yes, of course.)

If so, I would like to personally invite you to submit your campaign at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/searchlightaward/. (You can also use this link to register to attend the awards.)

We look forward to seeing you in New York to help us decide who will win the 2008 Searchlight Award. In the meantime, we hope your 2008 brings marketing success to you and all of your colleagues.

—Ron Belanger, VP, Agency Development

New Yahoo! Shortcuts for WordPress

Supporting Material for Your Blog

A nifty new WordPress plug-in lets WordPress bloggers use Yahoo! content to support their bloggery. When you’re composing a blog post in the WordPress admin interface, the Yahoo! Shortcuts beta plug-in automagically begins matching terms in your post to Yahoo! aggregated content, such as company names, stock tickers, map locations, news, product names and Flickr photos.

You decide whether to keep or reject any (or all) recommended shortcuts before your post goes live. When you publish, your selected shortcuts appear in your post according to the format you choose. It’s very cool.

For more info, check out this post on the Y! Search Blog and definitely have a look at the tutorial. 

—Michael Mattis

Get Trendy

Studying This Year’s Trends can Help Prepare You for Next Year’s

When I was young and rebellious—as opposed to middle-aged and rebellious (just ask my boss)—to be called “trendy” was considered kind of an insult. It was the last thing that any self-respecting post-punk dada nihilist with big hair and a bad attitude wanted to be.

Later, I discovered that it’s good to watch and benefit from trends. If you’re selling hats online, for example, it might behoove you to know that Britney Spears-style fedoras are selling like hotcakes these days. As a seller of baby-T’s or greeting cards, you might want to know that “Jacob” is one of the top names chosen for newborn boys, and so forth.

We try to keep you abreast of search trends through our Buzz Index. The top trends on Yahoo! Search in 2007 have been recapped on a special site. Highlights include:

Sports:

1. NASCAR
2. Maria Sharapova
3. Boston Red Sox

Yahoo! Kids:

1. Games
2. Animals
3. Dinosaurs

Tech:

1. YouTube
2. Wikipedia
3. Facebook

Celeb downfalls:

1. Britney Spears
2. Paris Hilton
3. Anna Nicole Smith

del.icio.us (popular tags on the popular bookmarking site)

1. Design
2. HDTV
3. Games

For the complete list, click here.

Maybe it’s time to think about selling toy dinosaurs, or retailing Boston Red Sox caps or high-def TVs. Or maybe you should just sit tight and keep an eye on the trends for 2008. Either way, stay trendy by visiting the Yahoo! Buzz Index Buzz Log frequently.

—Michael Mattis

Photo courtesy Bazpics via Flickr.

Beyond Feeling Lucky

New Yahoo! Search Gets Prospects Closer to Done

Ever heard the expression, “How do we get to yes on this?” It’s the modern version of the old used car salesman question, “What do I have to do to get you into this car?” except without the loud suit.

At Yahoo! we’re all about the “getting to yes” thing. And here at Search Marketing, we try our level best to help our advertisers get their prospects to yes every day.

But consumers see it a little differently. What consumers—your prospects—want when they search is to get it done. When users search, they usually have a task in mind that they want to get done and as quickly and painlessly possible, though sometimes they’re not sure how to get there.

Enter Search Assist. It’s a new feature on Yahoo.com that intelligently assists searchers, helping them get to “to done” in one search. When a user begins to type in a query and has difficulty, Search Assist is activated and anticipates where the user is likely trying to go, and automatically offers a selection of search term suggestions and related concepts to the query. The user can then select the search term or concept that most closely matches his or her needs, or continue to type the query.

Often, people will begin a search with only a partial idea of the language they need to use to find what it is they want. Search Assist works on the fly, inferring the user’s intent and offering search suggestions.

For example, a search for “vans” may yield “vans shoes,” “vans warped tour,” and “used vans” as suggestions —that’s three very different uses of the word “vans.” Related concepts may present “skate parks” and “apparel” as options.

So what’s in it for you, the advertiser? Well, if users get what they want faster and what they want happens to be what you’re advertising… Well, you don’t have to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve to figure it out.

—Michael Mattis

A Direct Response to Feeling “Blue”

Yahoo! to Acquire BlueLithium

Fine. We admit it. Yahoo! is out to be the largest and most effective online ad network in the world. 

To further us along in our quest, we recently finalized our acquisition of Right Media, one of the fastest growing display ad networks and clearing houses for publisher ad inventory.

That’s great, but there’s still work to do. Alongside display advertising, “performance marketing” is one of the fastest growing fields online. Performance marketing, sometimes called “direct response,” drives specific transactions, such as getting a certain lead or the sale of an individual product or service.

BlueLithium will bring Yahoo! a ton of expertise in performance marketing and targeting, as well as valuable new audiences. We’ll be able to drive performance-based campaigns both on the Yahoo! network and off.

Eventually, this will mean Yahoo! will become a one stop shop for all advertiser marketing needs. For more on BlueLithium, see Todd Teresi’s post on Yodel Anecdotal.    

—The Team

Miles of Crooked Smiles

Kids’ Crooked House Visits the Burbank Campus

On the surface, it seems so simple. After all, it’s just a nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man,
Who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.

It’s when you start to think about what that word “stile” means that it gets interesting. Just what is a stile, anyway? A turnstile, of course, is one of those one-way revolving gates that lets people in or out, but not out or in, respectively.

A stile, it turns out, is a border, and the border in the rhyme is the one between Scotland and England. And the crooked house? That’s an allegory, too. It refers to the newly cobbled-together United Kingdom presided over by the doomed King Charles I in the 17th Century.

But we’re not going to let all that weighty knowledge spoil our fun at hosting a genuine, Yahoo! branded, Kids’ Crooked House, right here at on Burbank campus. In fact, this knowledge only adds to the good times.

This wonky little playhouse was built especially for Yahoo! by Glenn Halliday, owner of KidsCrookedHouse.com and one of the winners of our Ultimate Connection contest. If there’s a 90-degree angle in this miniature villa, our little friends here couldn’t find it. It’s been great having it around, and the big Yahoos love it almost as much as the little ones. It’s been a lesson in geometry, poetry, history and fun.

Thanks, Glen, and again, congrats.

—The Team

Research Online, Buy Offline

A new Yahoo!-comScore study shows the importance of merging your online and offline strategies

We know that many Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers have stores in the physical world as well as in the virtual world. And it’s no secret that a great many consumers research or “pre-shop” for products online and then try them out and buy them in the physical store.

A recent study by Yahoo! and comScore confirms that the Internet has had a major impact on consumer in-store behavior. The study, which involved more than 175,000 panelists and compared the behavior of those exposed to online advertising versus those who were not exposed, found that:

• As a result of online ad exposure, advertisers increase both the total number of offline purchasers, as well as spend per purchaser. In the study, this resulted in an a 41 percent increase in in-store revenue on average.
• Exposure to online advertising leads consumers to be more “engaged.” In the study, in-store spend per purchaser rose by 29 percent on average.
• Search and display advertising together can result in the consumer spending more time on your site, learning more about your products, which in turn can lead to increased in-store sales.

For more, download the Reaserch Online, Buy Offline pdf.

—The Team

Mr. Right (Now)

Yahoo! closes acquisition of Right Media, Inc.

Back in April of this year, Yahoo! announced plans to buy Right Media Inc.  As of today, the acquisition is official and we wanted to share the news with you.

So, how does an open ad exchange provide value for Yahoo! advertisers, publishers and ad networks?

Well, a little back story might help.

Right Media is the creator of a Direct Media Exchange, a self-service publisher product that allows publishers to sign up for, manage and optimize against multiple advertising networks through one interface. Yahoo! recognized the value of the Direct Media Exchange and knew that Right Media would be the “right fit” for its advertisers and publishers.

For advertisers, an open exchange will provide great inventory and audience options from all of participants in this marketplace. Advertisers will also have increased control and visibility into the buying process.

We believe this will provide value to publishers as well, as they will be given an opportunity to bundle their own ad inventory with inventory within the exchange.

Advertising networks benefit through the exchange by having the opportunity to compete with the largest players. The open exchange creates transparency and accountability, which should create a more level playing field for advertisers and publishers—all valuable assets that we can say “Right on!” to. 

–Roger Park (a.k.a., Mr. Right)

Yahoo! SmartAds for Travel

New, More Tailored Display Advertising

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half,” goes the old marketing phrase, first minted (probably) by department store pioneer, John Wanamaker back in the 19th century.

Yahoo! Search Marketing was founded on the belief that if you put relevant ads online and in front of people who are searching for your services, they will respond much more enthusiastically. Not only that, but the results would be quantifiable in ways Mr. Wanamaker could only have begun to dream.

So far so good.

But not good enough. Today we up the ante. Yahoo’s new SmartAds enable advertisers and agencies to connect with their customers through display ads in a more tailored and relevant way. This new ad product enables advertisers and agencies to market in a customized way in real-time with highly relevant, targeted ads on Yahoo! 

For the time being, this product is available for travel advertisers, and we anticipate rolling out Smart Ads to other verticals down the road.

For the complete low-down on this high value product, visit the Yahoo! SmartAds web site and check out the Demo.

Eat your heart out, Wanamaker.

—Michael Mattis

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