Advertising that presents the most relevant ad to an individual viewing web content represents a way for Yahoo to improve its ad performance.
Yahoo Gets Smart About Behavioral Ads
Behavioral targeting for ads has been an area of interest for the major search advertising companies. Google has been playing with it, while Microsoft made it a featured part of their new AdCenter service.
Yahoo has joined the behavioral game with a SmartAds product that should become available today. The New York Times said SmartAds is being tested on Yahoo’s sites by a couple of major airlines, which were unnamed in the report.
Advertisers buying their placements through RightMedia will have SmartAds technology available to them. Yahoo bought RightMedia by acquiring the rest of the company in April 2007; Yahoo previously owned 20 percent of RightMedia.
The Times cited Todd Teresi, senior vice president of display marketplaces at Yahoo, in describing how SmartAds will work:
“We’re doing real-time creative assembly that leverages what we know about our audience,” Mr. Teresi said. “You can buy the entire Wall Street Journal site, and when a female shows up, we will create a different ad or when someone from New York shows up, another one.”
Yahoo has enjoyed success with branded display advertising, even as its search advertising business faded behind Google’s dominance. SmartAds could make those display ad spaces more valuable to Yahoo and its brand advertisers.
