Yahoo enhanced its Smart Ads units on May 12 to include videos that can target consumers based on information such as location, age, gender and online behavior. The company has also begun allowing advertisers to run Smart Ads on its homepage. Yahoo is partnering with online video advertising company Mixpo on the Smart Ads for Video units.
“We’re encouraging the advertiser to extend their video advertising assets that they’ve built for other channels [for] users on the Internet, but we will look to personalize the asset based on the user profile or the user behaviors that we understand of our users,” said Dev Patel, VP of advertiser and publisher solutions at Yahoo.
Advertisers can use the units to tag video ads to be served to specific groups of consumers based on a browser’s IP address or the information that consumers submit to Yahoo, such as member profiles or search queries, said Patel.
Marketers can also target consumers with Yahoo cookies that track their on-site action, such as content views and search queries, he said. Consumers can opt out from targeting through Yahoo’s AdChoices mechanism.
The Smart Ads for Video units can include direct response features, such as social media sharing buttons, product offers, email opt-ins and surveys.
Patel declined to say what advertisers are using the Smart Ads for Video product at-launch but said marketers “in the areas of entertainment, auto, [consumer packaged goods] and travel” have “shown interest.”
Brands can serve their ads in Flash or HTML5 formats, said Patel. He added that the company has no plans to extend the product to mobile devices.
