Digital advertising at yahoo: building solutions for retail advertisers

Abstract

Display and Search based advertising are two of the most critical components of Yahoo s Online Advertising Business, both together contributed to 84% of Yahoo s total Revenues in FY 2010. With Yahoo s strong positioning in Display based advertising, its Display business grew by 15% during FY 2009-10.1 As more and more advertising shifts to Digital media, Retail advertisers continue to represent the largest category of Internet ad spending, accounting for 21% or $5.5 billion in 2010.2 As part of this project, we first analysed the existing Digital Advertising Ecosystem. Then, we understand the Advertisers needs under two main categories of Branding and Direct Response Marketing. We focussed on the advertising mix of each of the industry verticals and understood their advertising preferences especially for Retailers. We conclude that Retailers seek for driving both Sales and Branding through online medium. We understood the competitive landscape for Yahoo by comparing their offerings with Google on Display and Search platforms. After doing the competitive analysis we found that driving sales through Display ad platform is a viable opportunity for Yahoo! On this basis, we made two product recommendations, first one to leverage Social Networks for improving sales on Display ads because of references and second is to develop interactive form based ads which seek user inputs in the ad and try to complete the transactions in the ad itself. We would like to thank Prof Seema Gupta for her continuous guidance and support for the duration of the project. We also like to thank Mr Vikas Bansal, Sr. Product Manager, Advertising Solutions, Yahoo (India), for his providing mentoring and industry insights.