Yahoo’s Mobile-centricity; WSJ Vs NY Times

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Mobilizing Yahoo

Marissa Mayer’s vision from a mobile-centric Yahoo is coming to fruition through its series of acqui-hires and app development. As VentureBeat reported, half of Yahoo’s users are already on mobile, and its products, such as Mail and Weather, have been reinvented for the mobile age. Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Aviate is all part of Mayer’s vision for the mobile future. “We are convinced that the nature of search is changing, and what’s happening on mobile devices — using context, anticipatory computing — is where we see [contextual mobile app launcher] Aviate going,” said Yahoo mobile SVP Adam Cahan. Read more. Where do ads fit in the Yahoo mobile future? The jury is still out.

Testing Automation

The increasing mobile nature of social media has led companies like Twitter and Facebook to rethink how they develop and test their apps. Facebook in particular has decided to build out Airlock, allowing it to A/B test different iterations of its mobile app. A blog post goes into detail about how exactly this all works, but as TechCrunch points out it will improve user experience.

Preferable Paywall

On the Nieman Journalism Lab blog, Ken Doctor compares and contrasts newspaper giants The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal ability to overcome adversity brought on by Digital. He notes, “Advertising still represents a majority of revenues for the Journal, sources say, in the mid-50s percentagewise, with circulation in the mid-40s. That’s the inverse of the Times, which recently reported that 56 percent of its revenues now come from readers. Given that reader revenue is now growing as paywalls have gone up, and that print ads remain in sharp decline, majority reader revenue seems to be the preferable market position.” Read more.

Consumer Marketing

More CMOs are focusing on the consumer, according to Andrew Frank, research VP at Gartner. Citing a study conducted by The Economist, the percentage of CMOs whose companies focused on customer intimacy increased from 21% to 37%. Consumers are becoming more aware of privacy issues online, which could cause them to guard their data a little more in the future. Read more.

Ad Tech Crystal Ball

Mike Kisseberth, CEO at TechMedia Network, is predicting changes to both native and programmatic advertising, including the possible intersection of the two. In a post on folio, Kisseberth points out that a huge pain point for native right now is scale, but as that changes the ads will get more data-driven and regulated. For programmatic, media buyers will become more tech-savvy, and premium and direct will be more prevelant. Read more.

Supergraphic Monday

Have you ever wondered what all of investment bank LUMA Partners’ infographics on technology players and their ecosystems would look like if they were fused together into one graphic? Sure you have! Chief Marketer’s Scott Brinker doesn’t call out LUMA by name, but does create what he calls a “Supergraphic” for marketing technology. See it now (PNG).

But Wait, There’s More!