Two weeks ago, readers of the official Yahoo blog (creatively titled Yodel Anecdotal) were asked to submit questions for Carol Bartz, the company's still-newish CEO, to answer.  Those answers came back today, and they include several interesting tidbits. The first comment we'll hit shows what Bartz has come to perceive as her company's strengths and weaknesses.  She wrote, "I'm most surprised by how good Yahoo! is at connecting people to their worlds.  I hadn't realized that half of the Net users in the world come to Yahoo! every month, and that more people spend time on our site every month than any other site in the US. . . .  [M]y biggest disappointment is that although we have all these wonderful sites - like being #1 in eleven categories - we really didn't focus enough on what we were good at."   That last line undoubtedly connects to the different cuts Bartz has made.  It might also be a sign that more are on the way. Next, Bartz tried to sum up Yahoo's reason for being, and she chose the word "relevance," "whether that means knowing what weather to give you or serving up headlines you'll be interested in.  It's all about really getting you and we have more work to do in that area."  So expect more attempts at personalization as Yahoo rolls out its new homepage. Finally, as for what's happened between Yahoo and Microsoft, Bartz wouldn't answer a question about what Steve Ballmer's like.  And yet Yodel Anecdotal included the query and response.  Whether that's a sort of sly insult (not saying anything when she can't say something nice), a silence out of respect for ongoing negotiations, or something else entirely is anyone's guess. Regardless, it still sounds like Bartz has a clear idea of where Yahoo is, where she wants it to be, and how to bridge the gap.

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Yahoo Image Search has introduced a new feature that allows users to filter search results by Creative Commons license. The Yahoo Search Blog offers more details. "When you use Yahoo! Image Search, you'll now see a checkbox for Creative Commons allowing you to filter for images from Flickr that can be used commercially or that can be modified (remixed, tweaked, or built upon) with restrictions set by the image's creator." Yahoo says that by launching the Creative Commons license search with Flickr and making it available to all users, it is promoting reusable work while being transparent about the creator of a particular image. Yahoo says it is the first image search engine to offer the Creative Commons license. By allowing users to search for images on Flickr, Yahoo is also driving more traffic to its own photo-sharing site. It will be interesting to see if Google tries a similar strategy with its own photo site Picasa.  

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Yahoo has introduced their own version of Twitter. For now, at least, you can only use it in Portuguese. It’s called Meme—borrowed from a word coined by Richard Dawkins (he used the word to describe a human gene that causes selfishness). Critics have compared it to the less popular Tumblr or Posterous—both Twitter wannabes. However, contrary to critics’ allegations, Yahoo’s Meme is not just another Twitter clone. It is a cousin, in that it offers similar features, but a distant cousin, in that it offers a few unique features that Twitter users won’t find.  Meme users will find the main Meme page to exhibit many of Twitter’s standard features. Users create a name and can follow other users and gain followers, much like Twitter. They can also share photos, videos (currently only via YouTube), and music, in addition to sharing text updates (limited to 140 characters.) A feature unique to Meme that many believe will enhance its popularity is the “repost” button, which appears next to every feed. Other users can click the repost button and the story will appear in their own feed (similar to Facebook’s friend feed in their most recent update), which is required for commenting on a story. Meme also contains a sidebar indicator that displays how many times a story has been reposted. The repost feature adds a dimension to networking potential that could be particularly useful in viral marketing. Also like Twitter, Meme uses an animal for its mascot. But this animal doesn’t tweet! It barks! On the current front page, there are three individual dogs. If Twitterers tweet, what will Meme users do? Meme is currently still in its testing phase, but based on its logo and URL, it’s likely that Yahoo has the vision to expand Meme beyond the Portuguese language.

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Google grabbed 80.17 percent of all Canadian searches for the month of April, according to Hitwise. MSN ranked second with 8.84 percent of the search market followed by Yahoo with 7.34 percent. Ask received 2.75 percent of searches, while the remaining 41 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1 percent of Canadian searches. Hitwise categorizes websites into more than 165 industry categories and the search engine category came out on top, capturing 14.58 percent of all Canadian Internet visits in April. The social networking category received the second most number of visits with 13.83 percent, trailed closely by the entertainment category with 13.60 percent and email services accounted for 8.61 percent. Search engines attract a much larger share of visits in Canadian than in the U.S. or U.K. Search engines account for a 53 percent larger share of Canadian Internet visits compared to the U.S. and 22 percent larger than the U.K. Social networks, entertainment (in particular YouTube) and web based email are also much more popular in Canada than in the U.K. and U.S.  

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How would you define "boatloads?" One dictionary suggests "an indefinite quantity that is above the average in size or magnitude." Well, thanks to Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, we now have another definition of "boatloads"–its the precise amount of money it would take for her to sell Yahoo to Microsoft. Not a penny more, not a penny less! Speaking during an interview at the D7 conference, Bartz explained her stance on selling Yahoo to the Redmond company: “If there’s boatloads of money, and there’s the right technology, and the information we would have to have, then yeah….It’s that simple.” There you go! It’s that simple! Although, as we all know, it’s not that simple. Mostly because Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s not interested in sending out barges laden with cash. And, when you consider Microsoft is about to launch its new search product (likely today at D7), you could argue that Bartz has missed the boat–or her ship has sailed–when it comes to getting what she wants from the deal. PS. You can read more from the Carol Bartz interview here. You’ll find she has quite the sense of humor. Comments

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Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft sure do a good job of looking out for sports fans and film enthusiasts.  Although each company uses a different name for its feature, all three recently highlighted ways in which users can receive the latest information. Let's start with Microsoft's offerings.  Earlier this week, a post on the official Live Search blog discussed playoff searches.  Type in "NHL," "NBA," or a player's name, and you'll get what people in Redmond call an Instant Answer that includes stuff like scores and schedules.   Try the same thing with "mtv awards" before May 31st, and you'll see links to promo videos and a voting site.  Or do it afterwards, and a list of the different winners should be presented. A look at Yahoo then returns us to the world of sports.  On the Yahoo Search Blog, Yuko Kamae wrote, "Starting today, when you search for your favorite major league or college sports team on Yahoo! Search, a new shortcut appears with the real time score, the last game's score, and the date and time of the next game.  You'll also find quick links to the team's page, as well as news, scores, schedules, stats, and photos." Finally, Google stepped up with fresh OneBoxes tied to tennis and Roland Garros. A few sports and entertainment sites may resent these features, but it seems that the three search companies have done a great job of making timely information more accessible.

quot search yahoo sports microsoft company scores links google blog score three schedules information team instant game garros step voting

There has been talk about Yahoo 360 closing down as far back as 2007, but only now is it truly official. They've set a date - July 13 is the day that Yahoo 360 will be no more. Yahoo has been easing the transition for users to switch to their "new profiles," and is now requesting users move into their new profile by no later than July 12. Yahoo Community Manager Melissa Daniels at the 360 Blog writes: While we know that many of you have faithfully used this service over the past few years, our goal has been to find a way to unify your social experience and connections across all of Yahoo! and anywhere you travel across the Web. So, while we’re sad to say that we will no longer be supporting Yahoo! 360°, we’re excited about this larger plan and hope you’ll transition over and be a part of it, too. We also want to reiterate our commitment to preserving your blog content. We have been working to make sure we put the right mechanisms in place so that you can move your content and minimize disruption. It is with this thought in mind that we’re happy to introduce a new blogging feature that has already been integrated into your profile. Melissa goes on to answer questions like: - Why is Yahoo 360 closing? - It’s been almost two years since you first announced 360 was closing—why shut it down now? - What is going to happen to my blog? - First you shut down Mash, now you shut down 360—why should I give profiles a shot? - What about customization and photos? On 360 I can change the look and feel and upload multiple photos—can I do this with profiles? ...so if you want the answers to any of these, check this post. In addition, there is a FAQ page here. Yahoo says the new profiles do not have all the features and functionality that 360 profiles do, but they're looking forward to incorporating new ways of expression in to them.

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In the ongoing employee tug-of-war that the top three search companies are waging, it looks like Yahoo's scored a significant win.  Yoelle Maarek, who used to receive paychecks from Google, has accepted the title "Senior Director of Yahoo Research." Maarek actually founded the Google Haifa Engineering Center in 2006 and acted as Engineering Director there.  During her stay with the search giant, Maarek's team launched features like Google Suggest, Searching Ads, and Interactive Annotations on YouTube, too.  Now, as a post on the Yahoo Search Blog explains, "She will be leading the Yahoo! Lab in Haifa, Israel along with Ronny Lempel.  Their teams help further Yahoo!'s commitment to discovering new technologies that deliver compelling experiences on the Web." Additional hints as to what specific direction the research might take aren't really given, but the post does also state, "You can go to Yoelle's website to read all about her impressive research experience in information retrieval, Web applications, and collaborative technologies." It wouldn't be at all surprising if Google and Microsoft are a little nervous about how this development might turn out.

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The SMX Advanced conference is coming up next week in Seattle, Washington. It will take place on June 2nd and 3rd, and WebProNews will be there to cover it both days. More WebProNews Videos WebProNews readers can expect interviews with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft on a variety of topics including what's in store for the future of search for Microsoft. The latest trends and seo and social media will of course be discussed as well. Stay tuned to WebProNews for tips and interviews in the form of articles and videos next week, and beyond. Any particular topic you're interested in hearing about from the event? Let us know.

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There is still a lot to learn about Bing of course. Microsoft's new search engine hasn't been live that long. After reading the back and forth of Matt Cutts and Bing, I started wondering how Bing and Google were treating each other's results. Come to find out, that if you search Google (or other search engines) on Bing, you typically get a single "best match" result, with sub-results underneath it. You then get a link that says "search for other results containing..." When you click on that link, you get a regular SERP.  Perhaps even more interesting, underneath the sub-results, there is a search box that lets you search using Google (or whatever search engine the query was for...yahoo, ask, etc.). Now the results from a search with that box aren't displayed within Bing. I doubt they could get away with that. Although they do allow you to play videos from within a video search results page with a simple mouseover. I do find it somewhat interesting that they are making it easier for users to search with their competitors' search engines by providing the search box right in the SERP. It is perhaps fitting though, considering "Google" was the most-searched term on Microsoft's Live Search. It's not just queries for search engines that give you the one-result-SERP, though. Social networks appear to do the same, though not all of them. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Bebo all do it, but Twitter gives you a full-blow SERP. There are variations on the formula too. A query for MySpace will give you the one-result-SERP, and a searchable box, just like the search engine queries, but Facebook doesn't deliver the search box, but instead a customer support phone number. Twitter doesn't deliver the one-result-SERP, but still includes the searchable box in the top result. On a sidenote, Bing has some major relevancy issues with video search  (at least with a query for Google or Yahoo). On the first SERP here, I'm only seeing one result that has anything to do with Google whatsoever, apart from the fact that every video on the SERP comes from Google-owned YouTube. I mean seriously...the second result is a Britney Spears video. A Yahoo search brings up nothing about Yahoo, but a bunch of results from Yahoo. Google   Yahoo Make of all of this what you will. There are still no doubt plenty of tweaks to be made. After all, Bing isn't even supposed to be launched yet.

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Yahoo has named Eric Brown as its new senior vice president of global communications. Brown will be in charge of the company's global communication efforts, overseeing public relations, executive communications, product promotion, public affairs, internal communications, corporate reputation management and social media outreach. Brown will join the company in early July and report to Yahoo's chief marketing officer, Elisa Steele. "Our communications strategies and programs for Yahoo!'s key audiences are core to the company's success, and we are very excited that Eric will be joining Yahoo! in this critical role," said Steele. Eric Brown "Eric's extensive track record as a communications leader will be invaluable to our efforts to globally reinvigorate Yahoo!'s brand." Previously Brown was vice president of corporate relations at NetApp, managing global communications in more than 30 countries. Brown handled media relations, social media, internal communications and executive communications. He was a key part of NetApp's recent rebranding campaign and the communications program behind the company's recognition by Fortune  magazine as the "Best Company to Work for in America" in 2009. "This is such a pivotal time to join Yahoo! and I look forward to being a part of the team that helps the company reassert its brand relevance globally," said Brown. "Yahoo! has an amazing combination of assets and I am excited to work with the talented communications team to tell the Yahoo! story around the globe."  

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Abby Johnson of WebProNews had a nice chat with FindMeFaster's Matt Van Wagner about PPC campaign strategies and ad copy at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle this week. For one, they discussed how to get a good quality score right from the beginning. Talk about your strategies for achieving a good quality score. More WebProNews Videos A couple tactics discussed by Van Wagner include: - Determining what your competitors are paying for their ads, and approximately what their quality score is by doing a little "competitive analysis." - Pulling reports from the search engines periodically and using excel to generate a an optimized bid list. He says this does 80% of what a lot of the good tools out there do - for FREE.  

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Yahoo is suing the NFL Players Association, arguing that it should not have to pay additional royalties to use player's statistics and images in its fantasy football games because the information is publicly available. Yahoo filed the suit June 1 in federal court in Minneapolis. The company alleges the NFL Players Association threatened to sue it if it did not pay royalties for using the publicly available information. "Yahoo, like other fantasy-football game providers, tracks, compiles and posts NFL player statistics," Yahoo said in the suit. The NFL Players Association gave the National Football League Players Inc. the "exclusive worldwide rights" to license the player's biographical information, according to the suit. Yahoo said in the suit that in previous football seasons it licensed the information from the NFL Players Inc. That agreement expired in March, and Yahoo is citing a similar case in which a judge ruled in favor of CBS Interactive allowing it to use player's statistics without paying royalties. Between 13 million to 15 million people take part in fantasy football games that gross more than $1 billion annually.  

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We generally hear from the search engines that having a good product will usually lead to your ranking better. This is kind of what Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing at Yahoo discussed with WebProNews at the SMX Advanced conference this week. What tactics do you use to outrank your competitors? Tell us about them. More WebProNews Videos In the above discussion, Lippay and Mike McDonald discuss how if you really want to outrank your competitors, it can help to look at the problem areas with their products, and look at what you can do better, and what else you can do to distinguish yourself. Then focus on that. Social media is a good way to not only get a feel for attitudes toward your product, but also toward you competitors' product. This can be especially helpful when looking for areas of weakness in the competition.

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Yahoo announced today that users of Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, Yahoo Connected TV and Zimbra email will find a number of new third-party apps and widgets that will give them quicker access to things they do online everyday. To put this in perspective, Yahoo says that in the US, an average of 85 sites are visited per person, per month. The idea is that if you use these apps and widgets on Yahoo sites, you won't have to go to all of those other sites. The company offers the following slideshow: Late last year, Yahoo introduced apps in Yahoo Mail, but now they have added more. These specifically include: - Edit Photos By Picnik, which allows you to crop, touch up, and add effects to photos that you have in your inbox or online. You can then easily send them to people, save them, or post them to Flickr/Picasa. - My Photos by Xoopit, which lets you organize and share photos from within one view, and upload new photos. - PayPal, which essentially just lets you request and send money with PayPal right from your inbox. - Share It by Zumo Drive, which allows you to send and share large attachments like videos, photos, and entire folders. - Also included are Photobucket and OtherInbox apps.  A Day in the Life of a Yahoo! Mail app @ Yahoo! Video There are 14 apps available for My Yahoo, which can be found at the My Yahoo Gallery. These include Wordpress QuickPress, Flood-it, Books weRead, Time Zone Planner, Simply Get Things Done, What's Cookin' Food&Wine Pairing, Green Lifestyle, Mint.com, Hey Einstein, kaChing Stock Investing, GreatSchools, GasPrices, Today on Forbes.com, and My Medication Record. There are new widgets for Yahoo TV for YouTube, Showtime, and eBay (coming soon). There are also new "zimlets" for Zimbra, Yahoo's open souce email software. These are similar to the apps announced for Yahoo Mail.

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Americans viewed a record 16.8 billion videos online in April, a 16 percent increase over March, according to new data from comScore. A surge in video viewing at YouTube during April contributed to the month's significant gains. Google sites were once again the most popular property with 6.8 billion videos viewed (40.7 percent online video market share), a 15 percent increase over March. YouTube accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media landed in the second spot with 513 million videos (3.1 percent), followed by Hulu with 397 million (2.4 percent) and Yahoo sites with 355 million (2.1 percent). Also making it into the top ten with less than 2 percent share were Viacom, Microsoft sites, Turner Network, CBS Interactive, Disney Online and AOL. Nearly 152 million Internet users watched an average of 111 videos per viewer in April. Google sites hit an all-time high of 107.9 million video viewers during the month. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 58.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo sites (45.4 million) and Hulu (40.1 million). Over three-quarters (78.6 percent) of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. The average online video viewer watched 6.4 hours of content. YouTube attracted 107.1 million viewers who watched 63.5 videos per user. MySpace captured 49 million viewers who watched 387 million videos (7.9 videos per viewer). Hulu accounted for 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but 4.2 percent of all minutes spent watching online video. The length of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.  

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Research reported by StatCounter says that Microsoft's new Bing search engine has taken over Yahoo for the second place slot in search market share. Clearly, it's getting a lot of attention since it just launched, so let's keep this in context. "It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner," says StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. "Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of $40bn it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated." According to StatCounter, in the US Bing reached 16.28% of market share, with Yahoo at 10.22%, and Google still sitting comfortably at 71.47%. On a global scale, StatCounter data finds that Bing at 5.62% has taken a smaller lead over Yahoo! (5.13%), with Google sitting at 87.62%. There is no doubt that many people who normally use Google (or even Yahoo) have used a Bing a little within the past week (myself included), but clearly not all of them are going to abandon their Google habits in favor of Bing. It will be very interesting to see how this pans out once the initial hype dies down. The real question is whether or not Microsoft's big marketing budget will pay off in Bing usage. Clearly brand is the biggest obstacle Microsoft has been trying to clear for years in terms of search. You can check out a couple of the new Bing commercials here.

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In the last few months Jerry Yang spent as CEO of Yahoo, as well as the first few months of Carol Bartz's reign, a lot of people got laid off.  Unfortunately for the company, at least a few valued employees are quitting, too, and a senior vice president is ready to join that second group's ranks. Allen Olivo is in charge of global brand marketing, and has been on Yahoo's payroll for over three years.  He's not the sort of guy Yahoo should want to lose, since according to Olivo's LinkedIn profile, his past work experience includes stints at impressive corporations like Apple, Amazon, and Pacific Bell.  Yet as part of his profile, Olivo also stated that he's interested in "career opportunities," "job inquiries," "business deals," "getting back in touch," "new ventures," "expertise requests," and "reference requests," which amounts to showing a lot of curiosity in things other than his current employer. And statements about Olivo's departure are well past the rumor stage now, with a Yahoo rep admitting to Kara Swisher, "Allen Olivo is leaving the company to pursue other interests." From Carol Bartz's point of view, the one silver lining to all of this might be that Olivo has apparently agreed to stick around for a bit to help his (as yet unnamed) replacement get situated.

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In a somewhat literal sense, Yahoo appears to be on the move again.  A fresh report indicates that the company's very interested in building another data center, and Lockport, New York has been identified as one likely location.  According to the Buffalo News, "Yahoo! wants to break ground in August, with a completion target date of September 2010, [Lockport Supervisor Marc] Smith said."  The data center should be about 190,000 square feet in size, and Yahoo intends to spend $150 million on it. Interesting, right?  Now, one sticking point is that people on both the Yahoo and Lockport ends of things have said nothing's finalized; no contracts have been signed.  It also seems that some Lockport politicians spilled the beans about the preliminary dealings before they were supposed to. But Yahoo has sought formal site approval and a tax break in Lockport, which bodes well for the project, and even if Lockport doesn't wind up being chosen, Yahoo's liable to start construction somewhere soon for the sake of that September 2010 target date. And here's a nice tidbit: with the data center should come at least 75 jobs paying an average of $50,000 per year.

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On February 26th, Yahoo announced that its chief financial officer, Blake Jorgensen, would be leaving the company.  Now Yahoo has found a replacement in the form of Tim Morse. Morse has a fairly impressive background.  Early on in his professional life, he spent a full 15 years climbing the ranks at General Electric, which is obviously a large and important corporation.  CFO and general manager of business development, GE Plastics, was the last position Morse held.  More recently, he worked as CFO of Altera, a semiconductor company with a market cap of $5.10 billion.  And during the course of the past year, Altera's stock has done a bit better, percentage-wise, than either the Nasdaq or the Dow (a decline of 24.70 percent compared to drops of 24.73 percent and 28.16 percent, respectively). Yahoo's stock, meanwhile, has plummeted 38.77 percent over the past 52 weeks. So Yahoo's executives are definitely hoping that Morse will initiate a change of pace.  Carol Bartz stated, "Tim has a proven ability to translate strategy into structure, process, and execution, and I am delighted that he will be joining my leadership team to help drive Yahoo!'s growth." Morse should assume full CFO responsibilities on July 1st.

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There are a few interesting videos currently floating around right now that I thought would be worth sharing here. The first one is from Google's Matt Cutts at a site review session at Google I/O. The second one is of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at the All Things Digital Conference, and the third is the recent LinkedIn Tech Talk event. Matt Cutts The Cutts video is an hour long, but we know many of our readers will listen to pretty much anything he has to say. "About 38 minutes in, the session morphed into a general Q&A. So even if you don’t care about site reviews, the Q&A might be interesting to you," Cutts notes. Carol Bartz Kara Swisher at All Things Digital was kind enough to post this video of her interview with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. "Yes, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz did indeed drop the F-bomb on BoomTown quite expertly in an onstage interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference recently–and, yes, it was both expected and enjoyable," says Swisher. LinkedIn Tech Talk Last but not least, is the recent LinkedIn TechTalk. You'll find this one a bit techier (obviously), but a number of you will probably be interested in this as well. "It’s a tad long with a running time of nearly 61 minutes, but if you’re interested in SCALA it will be well worth it," says LinkedIn's Mario Sundar. If you have thoughts on any of these videos, please feel free to discuss them in the comments section below. With that, I'll leave you to enjoy nearly 3 hours of content on one page (it's cool if you don't want to watch it all at once).

quot cutts bartz carol digital yahoo linkedin interest interesting interview videos minutes conference video matt swisher worth says session tech

Yahoo is welcoming several new members to its Newspaper Consortium. These are Freedom Communications’ flagship newspaper, Orange County (Calif.) Register and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.; the North Jersey Media Group’s The Record and Herald News; and The San Diego Union-Tribune. "This longest lasting and largest coalition of local U.S. newspapers is bringing display advertising to the search-dominated local ad market, and continues to grow and thrive as more and more members deliver game-changing results," a spokesperson for Yahoo tells WebProNews. Here some interesting stats he shared with us: - Several newspapers have topped $1 million in weekly sales of Yahoo targeted ads - 288 newspaper sites have launched Yahoo's core search products: contextual-advertising, paid-search, and web search; - 350 newspapers now receive more than 23 million referrals a month from the distribution of news headlines across the Yahoo! network and through its services, including Yahoo Front Page, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Finance, as well as across Yahoo Mobile and on Yahoo Messenger - More than 160 newspapers are now live on APT from Yahoo, Yahoo's ad management platform, since its launch in September 2008 with two pilot newspapers - More than 4,000 newspaper sales representatives have participated in sales training sessions provided by Yahoo. "Selling targeted and measurable advertising campaigns to local businesses is really delivering results for our newspaper partners," says Lem Lloyd, vice president, U.S. Partnerships, Yahoo Inc. "With more and more local advertisers shifting dollars from traditional media to online, local advertising is a great growth opportunity for the newspaper industry." The Consortium is made up of 814 newspapers from 43 media holding companies, and accounts for 51% of all Sunday circulation. So how do these organizations view the consortium? Here's what a few of them had to say: Freedom Interactive "The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium provides exciting opportunities to enhance the accessibility and usefulness of Freedom’s Web sites for visitors and advertisers," said Douglas S. Bennett, president, Freedom Interactive. "Through this alliance, we offer our advertising customers a very sophisticated level of targeting by demographics, interest categories and ZIP code-level geography, which will lead to even more impact and returns from their advertising investments." North Jersey Media Group "Our site, NorthJersey.com, is the top local news site in the North Jersey region with about one million local and national unique visitors monthly," said Stephen A. Borg, president and publisher, North Jersey Media Group.  "We look forward to taking full advantage of Yahoo!'s capacity to expand our online reach even further, and we’re especially interested in the growth opportunities from Yahoo's behavioral targeting capabilities." San Diego Union Tribune "The partnership between the Union-Tribune and Yahoo will allow us to provide our advertising partners with increased online reach and opportunities for behavioral targeting," said Ed Moss, president and publisher, The San Diego Union-Tribune. "The combination of SignOnSanDiego.com with Yahoo’s robust network and data capabilities, will allow us to offer advertising packages that can reach 83 percent of the San Diego market." Yahoo says the top performers in the consortium are The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Daily News. The former increased its online audience reach in Atlanta from 15% to 80%.  

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Yahoo has introduced a new version of the Yahoo Toolbar today. It runs on Internet Explorer 6+ and Firefox (as a beta). "The new Yahoo! Toolbar now offers greater customization and more immediate access to the information you care about most from across the entire web – not just Yahoo! sites," says Burke Culligan, Senior Director of Yahoo Front Doors.   One of the new features of the toolbar is a "preview and go" feature, which lets you see small previews of your favorite sites in a drop down window, showing real-time info without having to leave the page you're on. "Customize your toolbar with dozens of apps from Yahoo! and across the rest of the web, so you can check on your multiple email inboxes (Yahoo! and AOL), your eBay listings, the latest news from People.com or USA Today, stock portfolios, and even your local weather or movie showtimes," suggests Culligan.   The toolbar also comes with a faster search tool. It incorporates technology from Inquisitor, and offers query suggestions, search history, and the ability to directly search other sites from the search box. Users can also easily customize the toolbar by adding and subtracting apps. You can choose from the apps in Yahoo's gallery, add your own, edit the layout, and customize your search settings.  

yahoo toolbar search quot sites customize apps across previews culligan faster real offers info multiple people incorporates query front introduc

The Associated Press (AP) is saying it hopes to negotiate more lucrative licensing deals with major web sites. Reporting for the AP itself, Michale Liedtke says that AP CEO Tom Curley discussed possible revenue initiatives to protect online content. Here are some key facts from the Liedtke's piece:  - Curley said after lowering its fees for U.S. newspapers by $30 million this year, the AP will reduce fees by a total of $45 million for newspapers and broadcasters next year. The plan had previously been to lower newspaper fees by $35 million. - Curley said the AP expects its revenue to decrease both this year and next year. - The AP intends to cut 10% of its payroll costs by the end of the year. The goal is to achieve this through attrition and early retirement offers, but layoffs haven't been ruled out - The AP's contract with Google expires at the end of the year - The AP's four largest online partnerships are with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL. The AP is talking about one idea to get revenue from ads attached to its content that would include bundles of some of the organizations top stories with those of newspapers and broadcasters on different topics. This concept would include AP landing pages that they say could compete with Google News, Yahoo News and MSN. The AP is also considering charging readers to see some of its online content. What do you think about the ideas the AP is tossing around? Would you pay to view some of the AP's content?

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Sometimes you just want to get rid of stuff, and Yahoo seems to be in that mindset right now.  Yesterday, the Sunnyvale-based company arranged to exchange one domain for a little bit of money and also decided to simply shut down another project. Yahoo Gallery is the still-in-beta service that will cease to exist in the near future; a message posted on the homepage gives it until July 14th.  Yahoo isn't directly promoting any other site as a replacement (Yahoo Gallery was designed to showcase applications with ties to Yahoo products, by the way), but users have at least been provided with a way of saving their work. Click Image To Enlarge The closure, as you can see from the above screenshot, will come as a result of "reprioritizing." As for the property that got sold, Contests.com was the domain name and $380,000 was its price.  Both Larry Fischer and MG Siegler noted that this sum seems rather low for such a premium-sounding site.  Fischer even added, "My question for Yahoo is WHAT WERE YOU THINKING SELLING THIS NAME?" Taken together, these developments are somewhat reminiscent of the GeoCities situation. Yahoo's at least making a quick job of cleaning out the corporate closet, though.

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Yahoo wants you to know that it values your privacy as much as - or possibly more than - Google.  Yesterday, the Mountain View-based giant got a bit of a head start in terms of describing a hearing titled "Behavioral Advertising: Industry Practices and Consumer Expectations," but Sunnyvale has now published its take.  Anne Toth, Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy at Yahoo, testified in front of the House Energy & Commerce Committee subcommittee and wrote about the experience afterward on the Yodel Anecdotal blog.  A full transcript of her speech is available if you're interested. However, one of the main points Toth made was this: "We now hold your data in identifiable form for just 90 days (with some limited exceptions) - the shortest duration in the industry.  And we apply it to the widest array of data, far outpacing our competitors." She also pointed out that links to Yahoo's Privacy Center are available from almost all Yahoo pages, and that users can opt out of receiving interest-based ads. So Yahoo seems to have positioned itself as a privacy leader (as opposed to moral pygmy) acting in consumers' best interests.  Yesterday, Chris Crum wrote about how a Google representative portrayed her company.

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Yahoo has launched a new self-serve display advertising solution called Yahoo My Display Ads. The company says the solution is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses easily reach their target audience via Yahoo and its network of partner sites. "Yahoo! My Display Ads allows small businesses to build on their search marketing with display campaigns that reach a targeted audience on some of the Internet’s most popular websites," says Joanne Bradford, senior vice president North America Revenue and Market Development at Yahoo.  "This new solution provides an affordable and accessible option for businesses to run brand and performance campaigns that reach the local audiences that matter to them most." The solution comes with over 800 display ad templates. Advertisers can choose between CPM or CPC-based pricing. Yahoo says this caters to both branding and performance marketing goals. Advertisers can also track and manage campaign performance goals with daily reporting. Yahoo My Display Ads is powered by Seatle-based AdReady. "AdReady’s partnership with Yahoo! will provide advertisers with direct access to high value advertising inventory from the largest provider of display advertising in the world," said Aaron Finn, President and CEO, AdReady.  "With Yahoo! My Display Ads, we hope to make display as easy, effective and accessible as search." Some Yahoo Small Business customers were able to use Yahoo My Display Ads last year within a limited program. Yahoo says this program tested to positive results.

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Remember those rumors that certain tech companies had agreed to not poach each other's employees?  Well, it looks like Microsoft's accusers might owe the corporation an apology, as it's gotten a person each away from Yahoo and Google. According to Todd Bishop, "Microsoft said this morning that it has . . . hired Yongdong Wang, the former Yahoo vice president of international search, into an unspecified position reporting to Harry Shum, Microsoft's corporate vice president for search product development."  Which represents a pretty impressive catch. Then, "Microsoft also confirmed this morning that it recently hired Knut Risvik, a former Google engineering director, as a partner architect focusing on Microsoft's search platform and infrastructure."  And in fact, Risvik spent about two years as a chief architect at Yahoo before going to Google, so his hire is almost doubly interesting. Indeed, these moves prove that Microsoft is quite intent on catching up with (and presumably, surpassing) its rivals in the search industry.  Hiring competing talent seems like a simple way to do it, too. You have to wonder if Google and Yahoo won't decide to lure a few people away from Redmond just for the heck of it in response.

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As reported earlier, Yahoo! has launched a new self-serve display advertising solution called Yahoo! My Display Ads. A Yahoo spokesperson was kind enough to answer a few questions about the service for WebProNews. Chris Crum: Are there templates that support video and rich media? Yahoo: At this time My Display Ads does not support video or rich media, but they may be considered for future product releases.  CC: What Yahoo!/partner sites will users be able to display their ads on? Yahoo: Advertisers will be able to display their ads across Yahoo! properties and select partner sites, rather than having to make specific buys per site. Furthermore, advertisers will be able to target by site content category - i.e. Shopping, Travel, Education to name a few - across these sites. CC: Is this in any way integrated into Yahoo Search Marketing? Yahoo: Yahoo! My Display Ads runs on Yahoo!'s Right Media Exchange. It is not integrated with search and offers only display solutions to advertisers  across the Yahoo! network.  However, we will continue to enhance this product and identify key areas of integration across the Yahoo! product suite. CC: How quickly can an advertiser get an ad displayed throughout the network from the beginning of the creative process? Yahoo: Advertisers can quickly create banners ads (in a matter of hours - or even minutes) and once a campaign is submitted, it will take 1-4 business days for review and approval before it can be displayed across the Yahoo! network. I'd like to thank Yahoo for answering these questions. It should be noted that while Yahoo! My Display Ads aren't integrated directly with search, campaigns from both the display ads and search ads can be tracked together. Matt Lillig with Yahoo! Search Analytics left the following comment on the first WebProNews article about the service: Hi Chris, Thanks again for staying on top of the latest Yahoo! news! This is a great program because it gives everybody a chance to run cost effective display campaigns. Any Yahoo! search advertiser should also be aware that if they sign up with Yahoo! My Display Ads, they'll now have an opportunity to track both their Yahoo! My Display Ads and their Yahoo! Search campaigns under one roof using the Full Analytics solution within their Yahoo! Search Marketing account. As you dicussed in one of your previous posts, running display ads along with search has shown to provide a better ROI than running either display or search by themselves: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/05/search-ads-vs-display-ads There are also recent independent studies that back up this search + display theory: Online Publishers Association Study Shows Consumers Exposed to Display Advertising Are More Engaged and Spend More Money Online http://64.13.250.16/newsletter.php?newsId=531&newsType=pr Search Engine Marketing and Online Display Advertising Integration Study http://www.iprospect.com/about/researchstudy_2009_searchanddisplay.htm Using Full Analytics, advertisers will be able to take advantage of the Assist metric and measure how well their Yahoo! My Display Ads perform at driving conversions for their other ads, such as search. Using Full Analytics, display advertisers no longer have to rely on the direct reponse (last click conversion) method of measuring the success of a display ad. They can now attribute credit to display ads that drive conversions for their other ads (down the conversion funnel) due to their branding power. Matt Lillig Yahoo! Search Analytics  

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First off: yes, at this point, we're all ready to slap Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz with a fish every time they talk about a partnership or acquisition.  Just the same, millions of dollars are at stake, so it seems important to acknowledge that Ballmer's once again said he's open to a deal.  Or to repeat Ballmer's remarks verbatim, the CEO said according to Reuters, "We remain open to a partnership with Yahoo."  And when asked if something might be arranged within the next year, he replied, "Who knows?" So there you have it. While speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Ballmer also made some interesting remarks about the economic downturn we've been experiencing, though.  "I don't think we're in a recession," he stated.  "I don't assume there is a recovery.  I think we reset to a lower level and the world economy will grow again from this reset level." Those comments are a bit scary, considering that Ballmer's in charge of a company with a market cap of $208.9 billion.  Let's hope he's off the mark - perhaps just grumpy due to the not-yet-realized Yahoo partnership.

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