Along with its acquisition spree since Marissa Mayer became CEO, Yahoo has been slowly but surely redesigning its slew of websites. While its main page, Yahoo! News, and email have already seen changes, the most recent updates consist of a major overhaul of seven other Yahoo properties. With this redesign comes space for new ad formats: Yahoo! Stream ads and Billboard ad format. These innovative changes are meant to retain users and attract new advertisers.
The Redesign
Yahoo has chosen to redesign Yahoo! Sports, games, music, movies, weather, TV, and omg. Importantly, this redesign brings consistency to desktop and mobile devices and better optimization for tablets and smartphones. In addition, the redesign is geared toward user needs by offering personalization on the landing page for each site. With previous optimization of the Yahoo homepage, the company saw a 25% increase in on-page interactions.
New Ad Formats
Most importantly, the Yahoo redesign will hopefully draw in more advertisers with its new ad formats: Yahoo! Stream Ads and Billboard Ads. These ads will appear in a consistent format across all of their properties and on all types of devices, from desktop to mobile. Stream ads are similar in format to what many social networks have been adopting. They appear within a stream of content and contain a thumbnail, text, and headline with a link. These ads, intended to be less obtrusive to the user, will also be marked as sponsored content and have an AdChoices icon.
Billboard ads display as a banner across the top of the Yahoo site. They will contain interactive content, such as the ability to buy tickets or watch a trailer for a new movie. This brings an updated format for better use engagement to the traditional banner advertising style. With these new ad formats, Yahoo hopes to both increase its user base and user engagement along with attracting advertisers with better designed ad formats.
What do you think of these new ad formats from Yahoo?