Commentary

Yahoo's Mayer Goes 'Native' In Cannes, Makes Giant Product Pitch To Ad Industry

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, June 17, 2014

CANNES, FRANCE --Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used her presentation to ad industry executives here this morning to essentially make a big product pitch for Yahoo. And she utilized a format that Yahoo, and others, are pushing a lot these days: “native.”

After ticking off a number of Yahoo’s more recent product development launches -- digital magazines, “sitcoms,” etc. -- Mayer came around to the subject of native. She cited Yahoo research indicating that when a user is exposed to native brand content on the portal, they are 3.6 times more likely to conduct a “brand search,” and six times more likely to conduct a “related search.”

Mayer said Yahoo is developing new native formats and experiences that are designed to make advertising “feel natural” and “as good, if not better than the content around it.”

Mayer also focused on the other big Madison Avenue themes du jour -- video, mobile and social. On the subject of mobile, she trumpeted the value of “context,” noting that users’ phones “know more about them than anyone or anything” else, and she implied that has huge untapped potential for advertising. In the near term, she said that potential needs to be displayed in extremely simple ways given the dimensions of mobile screens, going so far as to champion “Simplicity is king.”

cannes, mobile, native advertising, search, yahoo

3 comments about "Yahoo's Mayer Goes 'Native' In Cannes, Makes Giant Product Pitch To Ad Industry".

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Sean Hargrave from Sean Hargrave, June 17, 2014 at 11:37 a.m.
Very interesting to see. I think people have written off Yahoo too easily in the past. Huge reservoir of content there, great source to tap in to native.
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David Shor from Prove, June 18, 2014 at 2:45 a.m.

It is great to see statistics emerging for non-clickthru-based results of native advertising. We're pleased with the lift metrics and are looking forward to more analytics results to complement our internal findings.

Thanks!

Travis Horn from S3Media, June 18, 2014 at 11:34 a.m.

It will be interesting to see if this amounts to more competition in the marketplace.