Scott Services: How to expand marketing reach in the slow season, part 3: Yahoo Gemini

Monday, 28 May 2018

How to expand marketing reach in the slow season, part 3: Yahoo Gemini

When most marketers think of Yahoo, they think of low volume and little impact to overall scale. However, Yahoo Gemini is not only search, but it taps into native advertising also.

Yahoo is one of the top sites for premium content and generates over 1 billion monthly visitors. Gemini primarily lies in-feed alongside Yahoo’s owned content; it also gives your ads access to Yahoo’s top syndication partners such as Hearst and Vox. Overall, it provides great access to extensive audiences.

Yahoo Gemini ad types

Yahoo Mail Ads

These ads reside in Yahoo Mail and come in a variety of different formats

Pencil ads: Native ads that appear within a user’s mailbox:

Sponsored Mail ads: Native ads that appear in your mailbox with a ‘learn more’ button that opens up to a more detailed ad:

Video Mail ads: Video ads located on the side of the mailbox:

Dynamic Product ads: Dynamic retargeting ads that are personalized to each user’s shopping experience and show up in the feed (note: if you are an ecommerce company, you will definitely want to leverage these ads):

Static ads: This is the simplest and most straightforward ad format: static ads that appear right within the native feed:

Carousel ads: These vary between desktop and mobile in format. Desktop allows advertisers to show a more premium format for their ads:

Mobile allows advertisers to use up to five images to tell a visual story:

Tips for maximizing Yahoo Gemini

When launching on native, start with carousel ads as your preferred ad type. Carousel ads tend to perform better with regard to direct response because they are only served on Yahoo properties with premium placements.

Break out desktop versus mobile campaigns. You can do this by creating separate desktop campaigns in which you reduce mobile bids by max levels. Having separate desktop and mobile campaigns allows you greater control over each campaign’s performance and budget.

Similarly, break out your Yahoo Mail campaigns. We have found that whenever Mail campaigns are combined with general native campaigns, the majority of spend will go to Mail because of its vast impression volume. Again, segmenting campaign types allows better control over budget allocation and overall performance optimization.

If you have solid competitors in the space, you should run a Mail domain-targeting campaign in which you target users who receive ads from your competition.

Summary

Yahoo Gemini can be an excellent source of reach, new users, and even direct response with its retargeting options. It’s worth investing your time in as you hit your slow season and are looking for incremental volume.

Read more in this series:

Part 1: How to expand marketing reach in the slow season with Quora

Part 2: How to expand marketing reach in the slow season with Amazon Marketing Services

Sana Ansari is General Manager of 3Q Accelerate, the high-growth division of 3Q Digital.

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