Yahoo gets a face wash
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Yahoo has relaunched its web portal, supported by a $100m global advertising campaign.
The company hopes the website refresh will boost both traffic and revenues.
Yahoo will also open its home page to rivals, allowing users to integrate third-party web services like Facebook or Hotmail into its portal.
Instead the search engine, Yahoo’s customers still go to the portal first, insists Yahoo’s senior vice-president for Europe, Rich Riley. That also makes it the most attractive place for Yahoo to sell advertisements.
“Frontpage adverts are incredibly powerful,” said Mr Riley, and can cost millions of dollar for a single day of global advertising.
At the same time, Yahoo believes that a new openness to rival brands will actually increase its profits.
The new “customisable applications” allow users to see a snapshot of their favourite websites and services within the Yahoo portal – whether it is a social networking site, a rival web mail service, or their favourite website.
This is supposed to make the Yahoo portal “stickier” and the centre of web users’ internet experience.
Fittingly, the advertising campaign has the catch phrase “It’s Y!ou”, featuring the exclamation mark that is part of the Yahoo brand.
“The home page is a powerful way to get a view into your life on the internet,” said Mr Riley, quoting surveys that suggest that 60% of Yahoo users in the UK want a one-stop shop to organise their life on the internet.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, a majority of users have already been testing the new website, but from 23 September the new look will be the default worldwide.
“We expect more traffic, the number of unique users to go up… an increase in audience engagement and more repeat visits,” which in turn will drive advertising income, said Mr Riley.
Popularity: 2% [?]
More Internet News
Filed Under: internet news
Tags: internet news, Yahoo
Comments
No Comments
Leave a reply