Yahoo launches game-changing ad platform
Yahoo unveiled its new advertising platform today, and finally gave it a name -- Apt.
The platform has been widely anticipated as a game-changer for both Yahoo and about 800 partner newspapers in The Newspaper Consortium. Essentially, by using one ad-serving platform, and tapping into Yahoo's deep resources for behavioral targeting, newspapers and Yahoo will be able to sell advertising based on audience, not products.
For example, a newspaper with 60 percent reach in its market could add, say, an additional 20 percent of unduplicated reach in its market via Yahoo, and deliver an ad campaign to all those users whether on the newspaper site or on Yahoo.
Perhaps more significantly, newspapers will be able to target ad campaigns based on user behavior and preferences, slicing that hypothetical 80 percent reach into highly efficient segments such as early-stage auto shoppers or ready-to-buy furniture shoppers. By some estimates, behavioral targeting can increase effective CPM yields by factor of 10. (See CIR 915, clients only)
For Yahoo, Apt represents an opportunity to take a leadership role in online display advertising, a category that has been beaten up in recent years as growth has gone toward search, primarily driven by Google.
Apt enables any online publisher and any online advertiser to focus on audiences, not products, which makes it a "transformative development for the advertising and publishing worlds," said Hillary Schneider, EVP U.S. operations at Yahoo.
The first newspapers to go onto the platform will be the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News. Others will roll out through 2008, with the goal to have the current Consortium members done by late 2009. The rollout is a massive undertaking, and collectively involves hundreds of technical and support staff at Yahoo and the newspapers. Each newspaper's current ad serving system, such as Open Ad Stream, DoubleClick or one of the smaller systems, will be replaced with the Apt system, while ensuring that current advertising campaigns continue uninterrupted.
For three different takes on the unveiling of Apt in New York, check out:
