While Yahoo has lately focused on buying and rolling out consumer-facing products, the Sunnyvale company also has ambitions around advertising. It drew attention to them yesterday, unveiling plans to add its Stream Ads format to several properties.
Yahoo first introduced Stream Ads, which it refers to as a native ad format, to its homepages in April. The ads are sponsored posts that are designed to match the content and layout of the page, according to the company.
The Stream Ads will now appear on Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo Music, Yahoo TV, Yahoo omg and Yahoo Games – as well as on Yahoo’s desktop email service and its Android email app.
The Stream Ads are part of the company’s effort, according to a blog post, to “launch more personalized, immersive advertising opportunities that are consistent across Yahoo.”
AdExchanger reached out to Yahoo for more on the targeting capabilities of the Stream Ads. According to Mike Kerns, SVP of Homepage & Vertical Products at Yahoo, the ad units are targeted primarily based on location data and contextual keywords. Read on for more specfiics.
AdExchanger: What kind of data can be used to target the Yahoo Stream Ads?
MIKE KERNS: For every effort we make to personalize Yahoo to our users’ interests, we also look at how we can make the ad experience more relevant and meaningful. Yahoo Stream Ads have initial targeting to optimize relevancy, such as content tailored by location. We plan to add deeper personalization and targeting capabilities in the coming months to ensure that users’ content streams are optimized based on their interests.
Does user info from the Yahoo Login come into play with the Stream Ads? If so, what kind of info?
We believe the online experience is fundamentally better when it is personalized based on a user’s interests. Yahoo Stream Ads are currently personalized based on information such as a user’s location or information provided by the user upon registration.
For the Stream Ads that appear on Yahoo Mail, are the Stream Ads targeted based on what’s in a user’s emails?
To deliver more personalized ad experiences, we identify keywords from email to make Yahoo Stream Ads as relevant as possible. We empower our users to set up the personalization preferences that suit them, and offer our users transparency and controls built-in.
