Yahoo's move to add
Personalized Retargeting and rebrand its three-year-old Ad Network into Yahoo Network Plus integrates technology from the acquisition of Dapper the Sunnyvale, Calif. company announced in October.
The "Plus" in the
name points to the available targeting data, access to ad inventory, and services. Aside from Personalized Retargeting, Yahoo offers behavioral, geographic, demographic, site, weather, search
retargeting and a bunch more.
Admitting that Yahoo has failed to market the reach and scope of Yahoo's ad display network, David Zinman, vice president and general manager for display
advertising at Yahoo North America, told MediaPost that Yahoo's strong portal brand and collection of content sites doesn't convey much more. "When we surveyed our advertisers, few were aware we're
also an ad network," says Zinman. "We wanted to highlight our capabilities as an ad network."
Retargeting generally produces the best results for display in terms of return on investment for
cost per lead or cost per conversion. Personalized Retargeting combines with search retargeting to reach consumers showing interest in specific keywords while searching the Web, but not necessarily
landing on the marketer's site.
Retargeting platforms identify consumers, finds them on other sites, and serves up similar ads. Many times dynamic ad creation customizes what Web searchers see
based on specific products on an advertiser's site. Retargeting generally produces the best results for display in terms of return on investment for cost per lead or cost per conversion.
Personalized retargeting, when customized, delivers "significantly greater lift," Zinman says. He says one client continues to see a 97% increase overall. "That's not a fluke," he says. "Most clients
are doubling performance, compared with standard retargeting."
It also changes the pricing model, expanding the ability for advertisers to buy retargeting based on performance pricing, rather
than CPM. This means expanding pricing based on a cost-per click (CPC) or a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) model. The performance pricing model, a takeoff from search, drives better returns both for
advertisers and Yahoo.
Zinman calls personalized retargeting a niche that will grow during the next couple of years. "Personalized retargeting is not yet offered by Microsoft, Google or AOL," he
says. "If you know a solution like this offers better performance, you kind of expect the bigger players to be involved."