One-to-one marketing comes to display advertising

SmartAds, launched this week by Yahoo, is a new display advertising tool that allows online ads to be tailored to each individual viewer.

by Helen Leggatt

As marketers know, offer relevance and creative execution is of utmost importance, particularly in the realms of one-to-one marketing. Until now, the traditional targeting of ads based on, amongst other things, a website’s audience demographics was as targeted as banner and display ads got.

Now, the introduction of Yahoo’s SmartAds sees the power of behavioral targeting brought to online advertising. Instead of advertisers providing a limited selection of banner ad creatives to be displayed based on a site’s general audience, they now only need provide the elements required to assemble a relevant message, offer and creative “on the fly”.

For instance, Yahoo’s demographic, behavioral and geographic targeting capabilities, along with its patent-pending ad assembly platform, could identify a surfer’s location, age and previous searches to construct an ad, from the elements provided, relevant to that user. Variables could include location-specific copy and offers, gender-based graphics, age-related colors and themes or product-specific information based on previous purchase history.

“Ad agencies have been really struggling with how to scale the value proposition of the Internet,”said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of display marketplaces at Yahoo. “We now can get scaleable one-to-one marketing.”

SmartAds will be displayed on Yahoo's network of publisher sites, including local newspapers. Currently only available to travel clients, it is expected to be rolled out by the end of the year.