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.”