The FINANCIAL -- Yahoo ! announced two display advertising solutions for marketers as part of a new partner program designed to significantly improve campaign performance by marrying Yahoo !'s massive reach and targeting capabilities with leading third-party advertising technologies.

By bringing together Yahoo !'s knowledge and understanding of its audience with third-party Smart Ad technologies from Teracent and Tumri, Yahoo ! believes it's offering an open and unmatched solution for reaching consumers with customized messages.

Yahoo!'s new Smart Ads program will help marketers to develop Smart Ad campaigns quickly and execute them at scale across personal computers and mobile phones in North America. Yahoo ! will consider expanding the program to international markets in the future.

"Smart Ad campaigns use ad-optimization technology to create a near-limitless variety of creative executions through a combination of offers, colors, images and messaging in real time. These combinations can be finely tuned to match customized messages with users, helping marketers to find the right ad for the right set of users and the right time. Testing of this initiative has already helped advertisers significantly improve campaign performance based on a variety of metrics, including click performance, conversion and overall return on investment," Yahoo ! reported.

For example, Yahoo ! and Tumri worked with Hewlett-Packard to create a Smart Ad campaign that generated more than 20,000 unique creative experiences, reaching more than 140 million US users. This campaign documented a return on ad spend that was more than 20 times higher than their traditional display campaigns. HP has developed separate Smart Ad campaigns with Yahoo ! and Teracent, also producing higher results than traditional campaigns.

"The ability to run a display advertising campaign that can match the ROI of my search marketing spend is a potentially game-changing proposition," said Catherine Paschkewitz, director of demand generation, HP Direct. "The Smart Ad solution has enabled us to increase our ROI by reaching the right set of users with the right message."

Smart Ads Start with Insights

Because Smart Ad campaigns are most effective when developed with rich consumer insights, Yahoo ! can deliver effective campaigns that move consumers from awareness to action. Nearly 150 million people spent more than 43 billion total minutes on Yahoo ! sites last month1, providing unmatched opportunities for Yahoo ! to work with marketers to develop effective and customized Smart Ad campaigns.

"Other publishers will offer so-called smart ad campaigns, but if it's not running on the Yahoo ! Network, it's not as smart as it could be," said David Zinman, vice-president and general manager, display advertising at Yahoo !. "We're giving marketers the opportunity to reach consumers with customized ads on the PC and mobile Internet, and given the high performance of these campaigns in initial testing, it's as if we've put performance marketing on steroids."

Mobile Smart Ads

Yahoo! will also soon offer Smart Ads technology to mobile advertisers through its partnership with Teracent. As with the PC offering, advertisers will be able to customize creative to individual users in real time. Smart Ads on mobile phones will be especially valuable to marketers, offering additional factors such as location, time of day, and even specialty attributes like local weather, to tailor messages to users on the go. Yahoo ! will offer mobile Smart Ad technology at scale for marketers.

The new program will also allow Yahoo ! to expand its current Smart Ad offering to advertisers across all categories. Yahoo plans to continue adding new Smart Ad program partners that will be certified by Yahoo ! over time.

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