Yahoo! Starts Retargeting Search With Display Ads
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February 25, 2009 – 11:12 am
Amidst the hoopla of the IAB Conference in Orlando, Florida, Yahoo! SVP of Advertising Joanne Bradford says the company plans to leverage its search technology and display ad inventory by implementing retargeting capabilities.
Retargeting allows advertisers to re-target a user with an ad after they have been cookied while visiting an advertiser-specified page. In this case, according to an article by AdAge's Michael Learmonth, advertisers will be able to re-target users that input specific keywords into their search engine. When the user visits a particular site within the Yahoo! network (Yahoo APT Platform we would assume), they will be shown a display ad when possible.
Combining the customer acquisition power of search with display ads across a network or exchange in the form of re-targeting would appear to be a very powerful tool. If an advertiser can get a sense of the user's intent (search), it follows that the advertiser should be better able to target their display ads.
This service could come with a premium cost but may still trump re-targeting options from networks and exchanges such as Platform-A's LeadBack.com which, like all display ad networks and exchanges, re-targets users who visit a particular advertiser-specified page - further up the purchase funnel.
The best part for Yahoo! and marketers: re-targeting will help unlock the limited inventory of search and further improve online advertising ROI. Look for Google to do the same. It makes way, too much sense. The only hurdle down the road may be perceived privacy concerns.
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February 25, 2009 – 11:12 am
One Response to “Yahoo! Starts Retargeting Search With Display Ads”
Naturally, I'm going to play devil's advocate here in comparing search-based retargeting to site-based retargeting like LeadBack.com. It appears Yahoo will retarget users who have searched for a term that's relevant to an advertiser. That's certainly useful, but isn't it at least as useful to retarget people who actually opted to visit your site? It seems to me that that's actually further down the consideration cycle, and so while you might pay for fewer impressions because you're starting with a smaller pool, you'll see better CTR's and conversion rates.
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By Div Bhansali on Mar 3, 2009