Posts filed under 'Yahoo!'
Yahoo! today announced that it has expanded its growing network of newspaper partnerships with the addition of four publishers, including Shaw Newspapers and its 25 daily and weekly newspapers covering northern Illinois and Iowa, The Buffalo News and its paper that covers Buffalo, NY, the Times Publishing Company that produces The Erie Times News in Erie, PA, and the Columbian Publishing Company that publishes The Columbian in Vancouver, WA. With the addition of these publishers, the Newspaper Consortium now includes 634 participating newspapers, 425 of which are dailies - 30 percent of all U.S. daily newspapers and 37 percent of all U.S. Sunday circulation.(1)
“Yahoo!’s continued momentum with the newspaper industry shows that current and new Consortium members value the opportunity to combine the newspapers’ own unmatched local news and deep local advertising relationships with Yahoo!’s leading technologies and extensive online audience,” said Lem Lloyd, vice president, Newspaper Consortium for Yahoo!, Inc. “We’ve already seen tremendous growth and have captured valuable local audience share across every major U.S. region through integration with Yahoo! HotJobs and the newspaper partners.”
Yahoo! has more than tripled the number of member companies in the Consortium since its inception in November 2006, significantly strengthening its Advertiser/Publisher Network and advancing its advertising strategy to be the “must buy” for the most advertisers.
“We’re in the infancy of a relationship between Yahoo! and our newspaper consortium that already exceeds our expectations,” said Jay Smith, President of Cox Newspapers, Inc. “Roughly one-third of the U.S.’s newspapers, including ours, believe a better day is here with this unique partnership of 634 newspapers and Yahoo!. We are seeing impressive results as our sales teams offer Yahoo! inventory to our local advertisers. As our consortium grows, so, too, will our success.”
Yahoo!’s partnership with the Newspaper Consortium spans multiple initiatives, including for many members, the adoption of Yahoo! HotJobs as their exclusive online recruitment solution, the distribution of headlines across Yahoo!, the adoption of Yahoo! Search on newspaper sites, cross-selling of advertising with newspapers’ local sales forces selling local advertisers’ inventory on Yahoo! and Yahoo!’s national sales force selling national advertising on newspapers’ sites. Many of the members also will be exclusively using the Yahoo! ad platform to sell display advertising on their sites.
To date, Yahoo! HotJobs has launched co-branded career sites serving more than 425 U.S. newspapers. By integrating with the newspaper partners and delivering better reach, relevance and performance, Yahoo! HotJobs has experienced 50 percent year-over-year traffic growth, becoming the fastest growing Web site among the leading job boards and surpassing Monster.com in the U.S.(2)
In addition to the Yahoo! HotJobs implementations, the first phase of advertising cross-sales has begun, with the sales staffs of several newspapers integrating Yahoo! inventory into sales packages for their local advertisers. The program will be expanded during the next several months, allowing Consortium members to target ads to specific audience segments. To date, 126 of the Consortium newspapers now also feature Yahoo! Search on their sites.
The newspaper publishers that have most recently joined the Newspaper Consortium are:
Shaw Newspapers, based in northern Illinois and publishing 25 daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Iowa, all of which will be implementing Yahoo! HotJobs on their sites. Of those newspapers, 13 of them will also participate in the Yahoo! Core Services components of the Newspaper Consortium-Yahoo! relationship, providing them with Yahoo! Search on their sites, as well as enabling their local sales forces to sell their local advertisers ads on Yahoo! and the Yahoo! sales force to sell national advertisers onto the newspaper Web sites. Additionally, these newspapers’ content will be distributed in key locations on Yahoo!, including Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo! and Yahoo! News.
The Buffalo News, which serves the Buffalo/Niagara region of the state of New York, will participate in all aspects of the Yahoo!-Newspaper Consortium partnership, including Yahoo! HotJobs and all the Core Services components.
The Times Publishing Company, which produces The Erie Times News in Erie, Pennsylvania, also joins the Newspaper Consortium to co-brand its ErieCareers.com classified business with Yahoo! HotJobs. The Erie Times News serves Erie County and surrounding towns on the shore of Lake Erie, including eastern Ohio, western New York and northern Crawford County.
The Columbian Publishing Company of Vancouver, Washington, publishes The Columbian and will join the Newspaper Consortium to incorporate Yahoo! HotJobs into their site. The Columbian serves the Portland, OR / Vancouver, WA area.
With the addition of these newspapers to the Newspaper Consortium, it now includes 26 publishing companies and has a presence in 42 of the top 50 DMAs in the United States.
Other Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium members include: Belo Corp.; Calkins Media, Inc.; Columbus Dispatch; The Day Publishing Company; The E.W. Scripps Company; GateHouse Media, Inc.; Hearst Newspapers; Herald Media, Inc.; Journal Register Company; Lee Enterprises; McClatchy Company; Media General, Inc.; Morris Communications Company, LLC; MediaNews Group, Inc.; Paddock Publications, Inc; Paxton Media Group; Philadelphia Media Holdings, LLC; The New York Daily News; The New York Times Regional Group; Times-Shamrock Communications; and the Tribune Review Publishing Company.
The newspapers represented by the Newspaper Consortium include major market dailies such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Herald, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Florida Times-Union, Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, New Haven Register, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and The Tampa Tribune.
(1) Editor and Publisher, 2006
(2) comScore Media Metrix Career Resources, 2008 vs. 2007
February 21st, 2008
Yahoo! today announced that it has sent a letter to its stockholders, outlining the reasons the Board believes that Microsoft’s proposal significantly undervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders.
In the letter Yahoo! says:
“(Yahoo!’s) assets - our brand and its audience, our relationships with marketers, our financial strength, our technology, and our strategic investments–are the core of our value and our leadership position in the industry.
“We have a huge market opportunity - and are uniquely positioned to capitalize on it. The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth - and evolution - of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.
“Today, Yahoo! is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble company than it was just a few months ago. We have redeployed our resources to drive Yahoo!’s key strategic priorities - taking important steps to streamline our organization and close down or scale back businesses that don’t support these critical growth initiatives. We are well on our way to transforming the experiences of Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers and developers - an important shift that is at the heart of our plan to create stockholder value.”
A copy of the letter follows:
Dear Stockholders,
On February 1, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal to acquire your company. As much has been reported in the press recently, I wanted to reach out to you personally to let you know why your Board of Directors, after a careful review by Yahoo!’s management along with our financial and legal advisors, believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of our stockholders.
Most importantly, I want you to know that your Board is continuously evaluating all of Yahoo!’s strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment, and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our stockholders.
We have a unique combination of strengths
– Yahoo! is one of the most recognizable and admired brands in the world. We have over 500 million users (nearly 1 out of every 2 internet users worldwide). In the U.S., we are # 1 in many of the most used online services including personalized home pages, mail, news, music, shopping and travel. Because we have leadership positions in so many indispensable online services, users spend more time on Yahoo! sites than anywhere else online.
– Yahoo! is an attractive partner for marketers. Yahoo! is #1 in online display advertising, which represents 90% of the advertising inventory on the web, and we are also a leader in search marketing and a pioneer in the growing fields of mobile advertising and online video advertising. Through Yahoo!, advertisers can now connect with consumers on our owned sites as well as those of our growing network of partners including eBay, Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers, Forbes.com, Cars.com, WebMD and more.
– Yahoo! has the financial flexibility to execute our plans, thanks to our healthy cash balance, which exceeded $2 billion as of December 31, 2007, and our substantial operating cash flow, which we expect to grow double digits in 2009.
– Yahoo! has made important investments in our core computing infrastructure enabling us to dramatically increase the speed of our search engine updates even while handling vast and growing quantities of data.
– In addition, we have the added value of our substantial, unconsolidated investments in Japan and China. We have substantial positions in Yahoo! Japan, the leader in its market, and Alibaba, which is strongly positioned in China, a market with enormous growth potential.
These assets–our brand and its audience, our relationships with marketers, our financial strength, our technology, and our strategic investments–are the core of our value and our leadership position in the industry.
We have a huge market opportunity - and are uniquely positioned to capitalize on it
The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth - and evolution - of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.
We are executing our strategy - and making headway
We have taken significant but disciplined steps to refocus our business on our objectives to become the starting point for the most consumers and the must buy for the most advertisers and enhance Yahoo!’s long-term performance.
Starting Point Objective: Our goal is to grow visits to key Yahoo! starting points and properties, where users enter the Internet, by 15% per year over the next several years. We are the most visited site in the U.S., and we continue to grow - we experienced double-digit growth in U.S. users in 2007 on our Yahoo.com home page.
In addition to traditional starting points on the PC - including our home pages, mail, My Yahoo! and search, we are particularly excited about our growth prospects in mobile, the biggest emerging starting point in the world. Globally, there are twice as many users of mobile devices as users of personal computers, and mobile advertising is projected to grow substantially in the coming years. We have an important competitive edge as the number one mobile destination in the U.S., and we are building a superior mobile experience for Yahoo! users globally so we can further capitalize on this opportunity.
Must Buy Objective: We are working to make online advertising easier and more effective for marketers, opening up new ways for them to connect with consumers. We’ve successfully completed the global roll-out of our search marketing system, Panama, which improved the search experience for our users, boosted returns for our advertisers, and increased revenue for Yahoo!. Last year, we bought Right Media, an exchange that enables buyers and sellers of online advertising to come together. Another 2007 acquisition, Blue Lithium, brings us best-in-class performance marketing capabilities, complementing Yahoo!’s existing offerings for advertisers. We also integrated our search advertising and display advertising sales forces, creating a one-stop shop for all of advertisers’ online marketing needs. All of these - Panama, Right Media, Blue Lithium, and our combined sales efforts - complement and enhance Yahoo!’s existing capabilities and will make it easier for advertisers and online publishers to buy and sell advertising online.
We are also creating a unique and valuable network of premium websites to serve our advertisers. We are making it easier for our advertisers to provide interesting and relevant offers to our users by combining advertising space on Yahoo!’s owned sites with that from a growing group of premium partners including eBay, Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers and many others.
As we reach more users both on our own websites and on the sites of our premium partners, and better monetize the ad space on Yahoo!’s owned and operated sites, we are striving to increase the percentage of total online advertising demand we touch from an estimated 15% in 2007 to 20% over the next several years.
These key strategies will be enhanced by our adoption of new, more open technology platforms that will encourage the development of new applications and the involvement of third-party developers - and help enrich the user experience.
We have accomplished a great deal in a very short time - and we are focused on building this momentum
Today, Yahoo! is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble company than it was just a few months ago. We have redeployed our resources to drive Yahoo!’s key strategic priorities - taking important steps to streamline our organization and close down or scale back businesses that don’t support these critical growth initiatives. The fact is that we are well on our way to transforming the experiences of Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers and developers - an important shift that is at the heart of our plan to create stockholder value.
I want you to know that the Yahoo! Board of Directors and management team remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our Yahoo! stockholders. This is a great company and we are moving quickly to make it even better.
Jerry Yang
February 14th, 2008
In a first for the web hosting industry, Yahoo! Small Business today announced a new service that gives small businesses unlimited room to grow online. The new Yahoo! Web Hosting service includes unlimited disk space, data transfer, and email storage space, for one low price of $11.95 per month. The new plan offers small businesses a simple, inexpensive solution for launching a new business or growing an existing one online, while eliminating worries about bandwidth and storage limits. With more than 1.5 million customers, Yahoo! Small Business is one of the world’s leading providers of reliable, secure hosting services for small businesses.
“Yahoo! understands that small business owners face a number of obstacles to success, and we don’t think that the growth of their online presence should be one of them. By going unlimited, Yahoo! is freeing its customers to focus on growing their businesses and driving traffic to their sites, rather than calculating the costs of megabytes,” said Guy Yalif, director of web hosting products, Yahoo!. “Yahoo! has long been the trusted partner of choice for small businesses looking to launch or expand online. The new unlimited offer shows our ongoing commitment to driving value for small business owners, who are an important part of the ecosystem of partners that we’re focused on serving.”
Yahoo!’s unlimited hosting service includes award-winning, easy-to-use web site design tools that allow business owners with little or no technical knowledge to quickly create professional-looking web sites. Yahoo!’s service also includes a free domain name, 1,000 personalized email accounts, live 24-7 toll-free customer support, and a new 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
To help small businesses generate leads and get noticed online, Yahoo! automatically submits its customers’ web sites to top search engines. In addition, web site building tools automatically optimize customers’ sites to be found by search engines. Other features help convert site visitors into customers including automatically generated maps and driving directions, business contact information on every page, compelling content guides, and lead submission forms. Yahoo! Web Hosting also makes it easy to quickly attract web site traffic by providing discounts on marketing services such as sponsored search advertising and email marketing.
“Yahoo! has taken a major step forward in delivering more value to small business owners looking to grow through the Web. Whenever you reduce costs and complexity for small business owners, you add tremendous value to their companies by freeing them to focus on their core businesses, and not worry about technical issues like bandwidth and storage — which they don’t understand,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president for SMB infrastructure solutions at AMI-Partners. “This is an aggressive move to lower the barrier to entry for small business owners, and significantly boosts the value Yahoo! offers small businesses looking for complete solutions for getting online.”
The unlimited-service offer follows a series of significant enhancements to Yahoo!’s hosting solution that focus on making it increasingly easy for entrepreneurs to quickly create attractive, high-quality web sites, including:
- Award-winning tools that guide small business owners through a simple, step-by-step process to open their businesses online;
- Web sites that are optimized right out of the box for lead generation;
- High-impact, professional site designs created with specific types of small businesses in mind, from attorney’s offices and home-repair services to accountants and spas;
- One-step email setup and an award-winning online email interface;
- A lead-capturing tool that automatically sends the business owner an email whenever potential customers submit contact information or request service from the business;
- Detailed guidance on how to develop compelling content for each page of the small business owner’s web site.
“I never thought building a web site would be so easy, and now I’m thrilled that I don’t have to worry about bandwidth and storage limits,” said Kaitlyn Sharp, owner, Custom Plumbing and Hardware (http://www.customplumbingandhardware.com). “The Yahoo! designs were great, and the simple instructions allowed me to quickly add pictures and information, and then to launch the site with a series of clicks. Our site went live after only a few hours, leading to an appointment and then a fabulous sale — all in the first week.”
February 10th, 2008
Microsoft today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.
“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.”
“Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own.”
The online advertising market is growing at a very fast pace, from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. The resulting benefits of scale along with the associated capital costs for advertising platform providers make this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a competitive choice while better fulfilling the needs of customers and partners.
“The combined assets and strong services focus of these two companies will enable us to achieve scale economics while reaching R&D critical mass to deliver innovation breakthroughs,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft. “The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers.”
The combination will create a more efficient company with synergies in four areas: scale economics driven by audience critical mass and increased value for advertisers; combined engineering talent to accelerate innovation; operational efficiencies through elimination of redundant cost; and the ability to innovate in emerging user experiences such as video and mobile. Microsoft believes these four areas will generate at least $1 billion in annual synergy for the combined entity.
Microsoft has developed a plan and process that will include the employees of both companies to focus on the integration of the combined business. Microsoft intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo! engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.
Microsoft believes this proposed combination would receive all necessary regulatory approvals and expects that the proposed transaction would be completed in the second half of calendar year 2008.
Microsoft is also committed to working closely with Yahoo! management and its Board of Directors as they, along with Yahoo! shareholders, evaluate this compelling proposal.
February 1st, 2008
AT&T Inc. and Yahoo! today announced a new multi-year strategic alliance that paves the way for an even richer and more innovative online experience for consumers - whether at home or on the go.
The agreement creates significant new advertising-based revenue opportunities for both companies from search and display capabilities from either a mobile handset or a PC.
The new phase of the alliance includes the following features:
– A new look and feel for the att.net portal, “powered by Yahoo!,” beginning in the second quarter, for new customers. Later in the year, the att.net portal, which will run on the My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail platforms, will be available to existing AT&T Yahoo! customers as well as those AT&T Internet customers in the former BellSouth service area and those with the legacy AT&T WorldNet service.
– Yahoo! provides search and display advertising for AT&T consumers on mobile devices and the PC.
– Once the new att.net portal launches later this year, any AT&T customer - even those without AT&T Internet service - can access the new Web portal and e-mail services at no additional charge. For example, an AT&T wireless customer in Seattle could establish an att.net e-mail address and access e-mail via a mobile smart device or a PC.
– Access to co-branded versions of Yahoo!’s mobile Web properties and the Yahoo! Go application for AT&T’s 14.2 million broadband customers.
– AT&T’s YELLOWPAGES.COM becomes the lead local search experience on both the wireless and PC screens for AT&T customers, bringing easy-to-use local search capabilities to customers at home or on-the-go.
– AT&T U-verse TV(SM) customers continue to have access to Yahoo! content through the service’s interactive AT&T U-bar feature, where available.
“Our goal is to connect our customers to their worlds, wherever they live and work,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO, AT&T Inc. “This new agreement with Yahoo! reinforces AT&T’s leadership in wireless and broadband and enables both companies to bring their respective strengths to the table to benefit AT&T’s customers. It also reflects the benefits of establishing strong alliances in business today.”
“Since 2001, the AT&T Yahoo! alliance has been a benchmark in both the telecommunications and Internet industries,” said Jerry Yang, co-founder and CEO, Yahoo! Inc. “The combination of Yahoo!’s innovative mobile and PC applications and advertising solutions, with AT&T’s leadership in customer connectivity, mobility and robust networks once again raises the bar for the entire industry and further establishes Yahoo! as a starting point for consumers on the Internet.”
The agreement calls for revenue sharing, but detailed financial terms were not disclosed.
January 31st, 2008
Yahoo! today announced its support for the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework for all 248 million active registered Yahoo! users worldwide. OpenID, an open framework based on proven Internet technologies, enables users to consolidate their Internet identity, eliminating the need to create separate IDs and logins at all of the various websites, blogs, and profile pages they may visit in the course of their online session. In addition to the many leading Yahoo! services users already enjoy, anyone with a Yahoo! ID will be able to use the same ID for easy access to any sites that support OpenID 2.0.
Yahoo!’s initial OpenID service, which will be available in public beta on January 30, enables a seamless and transparent web experience by allowing users to use their custom OpenID identifier on me.yahoo.com or to simply type in “www.yahoo.com” or “www.flickr.com” on any site that supports OpenID 2.0. Alternatively, web sites that accept OpenID 2.0 will be able to add a simple “Sign-in with Your Yahoo! ID” button to their login pages that will make it even easier for their users. Yahoo! is working with several partners, including Plaxo and JanRain, to make it possible for users to access these sites with their Yahoo! ID from the first day of the public beta.
“A Yahoo! ID is one of the most recognizable and useful accounts to have on the Internet and with our support of OpenID, it will become even more powerful,” said Ash Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!. “Supporting OpenID gives our users the freedom to leverage their Yahoo! ID both on and off the Yahoo! network, reducing the number of usernames and passwords they need to remember and offering a single, trusted partner for managing their online identity.”
“Yahoo!’s commitment to an open web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement and Yahoo!’s adoption of the standard today immediately triples the total number of people able to use OpenID,” said Scott Kveton, chairman of the Board of Directors for the OpenID Foundation. “With Yahoo! actively engaged with the OpenID Foundation and its community to promote OpenID, Yahoo!’s users will be able to more easily access the many sites across the web that support the standard, and the potential for access to Yahoo!’s vast international user base will create an even more powerful incentive for additional websites to begin accepting OpenID users.”
Yahoo!’s implementation is based on the OpenID 2.0 specification, which Yahoo! worked closely with the OpenID foundation and community to finalize in December 2007, and includes new features that improve security and usability of OpenID, making it the most user-friendly single sign-on and online user-authentication standard. Yahoo! users who log in with their Yahoo! ID on OpenID sites will have the added protection of Yahoo!’s sign-in seal wherever they go on the web. In addition, no email or IM addresses are revealed or disclosed as part of the login process, which further helps protect users from phishing or other attacks.
“Plaxo believes that users should be able to carry their identity and personal information with them wherever they go across the social web,” said Joseph Smarr, chief platform architect of Plaxo. “Yahoo! is making that vision a reality by becoming an OpenID provider. Yahoo! users will be able to easily access Plaxo and other services without having to create and remember yet another password. This also paves the way for a secure approach to data portability between the various services people use across the web.”
“At JanRain, we believe the evolution of the Internet and the next generation of web applications hinges on universal adoption of a secure, portable digital identity,” said Larry Drebes, founder and vice president of engineering for JanRain. “JanRain is a leader in OpenID libraries, tools and applications, and has worked closely with Yahoo! to integrate its new OpenID offering into our services. The addition of 248 million Yahoo! users to the OpenID ecosystem will be a tremendous milestone in expanding the user base for OpenID.”
Yahoo! will continue to devote resources to helping to improve the OpenID user experience and to educating its users. In addition, Yahoo! intends to expand its support of OpenID by adopting other elements of the program as the service evolves. More information and updates can be found at http://openid.yahoo.com.
January 21st, 2008
T-Mobile and Yahoo! today announce a strategic partnership which will see the first graphical advertising appear on T-Mobile’s pioneering Internet service. Web’n'walk, which was the UK’s first service to offer people unlimited access to the whole internet on a mobile phone, is set to carry a variety of innovative graphical ads exclusively sold and served by internet giant Yahoo!.
Mobile advertising is revolutionising the market by allowing advertisers to deliver more targeted messaging to consumers on their mobiles when on the move. As pioneers of the Internet on your mobile, T-Mobile and Yahoo! will combine their expertise in the industry and knowledge of consumer habits, to enable advertisers to offer consumers targeted graphical ads when using the web’n'walk service. Mobile advertising is unique in allowing consumers the ability to interact and respond directly to the messages that advertisers try to deliver to them when they are out of the office or home. T-Mobile and Yahoo! intend to roll out the first mobile advertisements on web’n'walk in the first half of 2008.
Phil Chapman, Director of Marketing at T-Mobile, said: “Mobile advertising is a key area of development for T-Mobile in 2008 and this partnership with Yahoo! shows our commitment to making this strategy succeed. With conventional mobile marketing tools limiting the levels of interaction, banner advertising through the Internet on your mobile creates many opportunities for potential advertisers to adopt innovative marketing campaigns. We regard Yahoo! as a leader in display advertising, and with its deep understanding of the mobile space and the potential that mobile advertising can offer clients, we’re glad they are on board as our partners.”
“This partnership with T-Mobile demonstrates Yahoo!’s continued focus on mobile and extending our leadership in graphical advertising across multiple platforms,” said Geraldine Wilson, VP of Connected Life, Yahoo! Europe. “Advertisers are fast recognising the value of mobile advertising as a core part of their digital campaigns, and we are excited to work with T-Mobile to create superior experiences that deliver great value to advertisers and mobile users alike.”
Thomas Husson, Senior Analyst at JupiterResearch, said in a recent report*: “The mobile channel enables advertisers to interact with consumers at different and unique peak times when they are relatively more difficult to reach through other media. More than any other medium, mobile can be leveraged to make the most of unique contextual, individual, and behavioural targeting.*”
T-Mobile has been at the forefront of the mobile Internet since the launch of the web’n'walk Internet service in 2005. Web’n'walk allows users access to the real internet, to surf the Internet when they want and how they want, T-Mobile have a number of price plans for Contract and Pay as you Go customers ranging from 50p per day with the 5 day pass for £2.50 to £7.50 per month for unlimited web browsing.
Yahoo! is focused on creating the monetization engine for the mobile Internet: enabling publishers to monetize their services, and advertisers to reach their target audiences at large scale and with impact.
January 20th, 2008
Yahoo! Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang kicked off the 2008 International CES Industry Insider Series today detailing the company’s vision for delivering the most personally-relevant and indispensable Internet experience to consumers worldwide. Addressing the needs of today’s users, Yang provided the first public demonstration of Yahoo!’s latest mobile offerings and offered a concept demonstration of the future of the desktop experience.
In his speech, Yang said “from the newest to the most experienced user, Yahoo!’s goal is to be the simple starting point for a much richer and more complex world so you can get more out of it. Whether you’re looking for fun, information, entertainment or social connections, you want to experience everything to the fullest - this is living life with an exclamation point.”
According to Yang, the company’s goal is to strengthen Yahoo!’s role as the preferred starting point for anything and everything users need online. To this end, the company plans to focus resources on becoming the best starting point for the entire web.
“To be the best starting point, it’s clear that we need to open the Yahoo! experience to any device or user. Mobile is a perfect example since more consumers are soon expected to come and go from the Net via their phones rather than desktops,” he said. “We’re committed to creating the best and richest mobile experience for all consumers - making it extremely personalized to their individual style and needs while opening up the Yahoo! mobile platform to allow anyone to participate.”
During his address, Yang welcomed the company’s executive vice president for Connected Life, Marco Boerries, on stage to demonstrate several new mobile offerings launched at this year’s CES and to elaborate on Yahoo!’s mission to foster a mobile ecosystem - ultimately serving billions of users - by providing indispensable and compelling services to consumers, developers/publishers and advertisers.
Yang also provided a preview of several exciting technology concepts that deliver upon his vision by sharing a glimpse of what his Yahoo! Mail inbox could look like. Yang demonstrated how Yahoo! could determine a user’s most relevant personal connections across both Yahoo! and multiple social networks. In doing so, Yahoo! would create a smarter mail box that prioritizes the most important messages from the most important people, providing a more personally relevant e-mail experience for consumers.
Not only did Yang show how Yahoo! Mail could prioritize a user’s most relevant connections, he also demonstrated how Yahoo! could open up Yahoo! Mail and incorporate mini applications (or widgets) from both Yahoo! and across the Internet. For example, by simply scrolling over relevant terms in their e-mail, users in the future could access things like maps, local reviews, invitations and more, directly from their inbox without having to open another browser.
By opening up Yahoo! Mail in addition to other services across Yahoo!, third party developers would be able to create new applications that delight hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
“Yahoo! has today outlined what is possible and that the future is not that far away,” said David Filo, co-founder and Chief Yahoo!. “Yahoo! is uniquely positioned to make this all a reality - we have scale, a huge community of users, great applications and APIs and insightful data. We now have an open platform for third party developers to build some interesting applications.”
“That’s the vision of the future we want to leave you with today: Yahoo! helping make the most of the Internet and the people you care about on whatever platform,” he continued. “We will continue working to provide you with an online starting point that’s more relevant, fulfilling and fun.”
January 8th, 2008
Next Posts
Previous Posts
