It’s a fact: The world is going mobile and shifting to an app-based universe—fast. And Yahoo! is shifting right along with it. Today, we’re pleased to announce a plethora of new mobile apps designed especially for Yahoo! users on Android, iPhone and iPod Touch devices, using advanced HTML5.

These new apps will let Yahoo’s 600 million users connect with the people they like the best and the stuff they want the most in totally new ways, from just about anywhere, when using Android, iPhone or iPod Touch gear. For more detail on the benefits of these releases, click over to the Yahoo! Mobile blog.

— The Team

Well, the rain finally came in the last hours of ad:tech’s annual San Francisco conference, but it didn’t dampen the spirits of attendees who stuck around until the conclusion of Wednesday’s sessions.

The Ad Blog attended several of these sessions throughout the day, beginning with the “Marketing Masters: Branded Online Publications” in the temporary theater set up on the exhibit floor. We first heard from Babette Pepaj, Founder of the social networking site BakeSpace.com, who described how the small idea of creating a meeting place for people to share recipes has grown into something much larger and dynamic. BakeSpace members regularly plan weekend get-togethers, and the site works with media providers like ABC to promote recipes for dishes served by the ladies in “Desperate Housewives,” such as “Susan’s Caribbean Chimichangas.”

Pepaj was followed by Yahoo! Marketing Development Manager Rick Rutter, who spoke on Yahoo!’s wide variety of branded content, which includes both sponsored videos and webisodes, as well as non-video web content on one of our properties. Yahoo!’s strength in branded content, Rutter said, was a perfect example of “Science + Art + Scale” in action: the content itself falling into the Art bucket, taking advantage of the Scale Yahoo! provides (and few other adverting providers can).

In fact, Rutter showed a particularly illuminating slide that detailed how today’s top-rated prime-time network TV shows only receive a third of the overall rating that the top shows of 30 years garnered. “Size matters when you’re deciding who to work with,” explained Rutter, which leads many advertisers to Yahoo! for stronger, more cost-efficient engagement with consumers.

Partnering with best content producers in the business—Electus, Reveille and Group M—Yahoo! is creating content that is perfectly aligned with what our advertisers’ brands want to do. “We really focus on integrating a brand in meaningful ways, not just screaming brand,” said Rutter. He further explained that Yahoo!’s insights about search traffic patterns help us program better; for example, we know that searches for food recipes spike after 4:00 p.m. each day, so that’s the time to get food-related content front and center.

Rutter bragged (just a little) that Yahoo!’s “Prime Time in No Time” is the most watched original web program on the ‘Net, with 308 million streams to date and 6.9 million unique monthly users. After the recent American Music Awards, which drew an audience of 14.2 million people on ABC, “PTiNT” almost equaled that number when 12.1 million watched its AMA recap episode.

Location-Based Advertising Myths and Realities
Later Wednesday, we attended a very interesting session that discussed the opportunities in mobile advertising that targets consumers based on where they are or where they’re going. Opening with the argument that it’s actually been around 100 years (roadside billboards for nearby restaurants), Norwest Venture Partners General Partner Jeff Crowe identified three current “hotspots” for location-based ads: 1) Maps as a template for local search, 2) Social networks connecting people with their favorite places, and 3) The general availability of user location data.

Crowe admitted that “all of this is in very early stages,” but pointed to the new iPhone 4.0 platform—in which user location is constantly relayed in the background to the phone’s apps for incorporation into content—as part of a fast-moving sub-industry. He predicts a growing acceptance of “mapvertising,” in which ads are built into maps, and “geo-fences,” where a user is delivered a particular ad message when he or she gets within a certain radius of a local business.

Additionally, navigation applications like the Tomtom or Garmin will shift from subscription to advertising-based models, says Crowe. Wrapping, up he identified geo-retargeting in online advertising as the “Holy Grail” of local-based advertising.

— Jeff Hecox

Tweeting Twitter
F.O.Y.’s (“friends of Yahoo!”) Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz are at Twitter’s “Chirp” conference in San Francisco today and tomorrow (tax day!). Follow Danny @dannysullivan and Barry @rustybrick, or catch all the action at @chirp. (You can also search #chirp on Twitter for even more.) And here’s a handy live stream of the events. There’s sure to be lots of news from the confab and the company, which now boasts 105,779,710 registered users, according to recent tweets, and now will include tweeted ads.

View Yahoo! Video on the iPad
The innovation just keeps rolling out over at Yahoo! Mobile. Those savvy guys and gals just released HTML5 playback for the iPad, which enables non-Flash video, so you won’t get that annoying blue question mark when all you want to do is watch a video. Click over to the Yahoo! Mobile blog for the deets.

Around the world with a mad man
Mediabistro’s Agency Spy reports that retired ad man Jay Shapiro, founder of BLUE, has built his own house on wheels and plans to drive it around the world. He’ll be accompanied by his cats, kids and wife. Whether the huge, biodiesel-powered vehicle will be more like the tortoise or the hare remains to be seen.

Making the case for mobile marketing
“Many marketers are overwhelmed by the technologies and terminology that fall under ‘mobile,’” writes Bryce Marshall in Chief Marketer. “However, the foundational components of mobile marketing are straightforward, support core marketing and communications programs, and deliver clear and measurable outcomes.” He goes on to offer tips on making the business case to your higher-ups.

Search market looking up
Good news for the search marketing biz—it was up 11 percent in the first quarter “on a same-client basis” according to a recent white paper released by Searchignite. So says Media Post’s Roger Barnette.

Creative spotlight: Ogilvy Brazil’s drunk driving PSA
How much was your most recent bar tab? Get busted for drunk driving—or, worse, get into a drinking-related accident—and it could be in the tens of thousands. The clever kids from Ogilvy Brazil run the numbers in this clever PSA. Hat tip to AdFreak for pointing this one out. Oh, and take a cab after your next three-martini lunch, OK?

— Michael Mattis

Imagine a consumer who truly appreciates your advertising. This consumer is more likely to spend money online, has a higher income, and a large, active social network where he can advocate for your products. He spends more than 14 hours a week on the same sites, making him an easy target to reach.

Now imagine there are 15.1 million of these consumers in the U.S. This isn’t just a marketer’s dream—this is the Über sports fan.

To better understand this phenomenon, Yahoo! surveyed 1,010 sports fans who visit online sports sites several times or more per weekmore than once a week. As expected, we found Über sports fans are much more engaged online than the average sports fan, but—importantly—they also have higher expectations for ads.

The key takeaway from our study was that advertisers who engage Über sports fans with relevant ads on the right pages can tap into an influential group that is more receptive to their messages.

Casual, Everyday and Über Fans
Sports fans in general are actively engaged online, spending an average of more than six hours per week on sports sites. The average Internet user spends only one hour per month on sports sites. (Source: comScore Media Metrix, Feb. 2010)

Online sports fans break down into three categories: Casual, Everyday and what we call Über fans. Everyday sports fans make up the largest group, representing a significant opportunity for advertisers to build reach. Über fans, however, take engagement to another level.

Who is the Über Fan?
Über fans represent the 15.1 million Internet users who live and breathe sports, every day of their lives:

• They spend an average of 14.1 hours a week on sports websites, nearly 7x more than the Casual fan.
• 25 percent have a household income or $100k-plus, compared to only 13 percent of general online sports users. They also tend to skew younger and are more likely to be employed full-time.
• Über fans are 51 percent more likely to read sports articles and online sports blogs than Everyday fans.

Über fans also have deeper engagement. Fully 97 percent of them check stats the day after a game, compared to 68 percent for Casual fans. Almost all (93 percent) go online while watching a game, vs. only 40 percent for Casual fans. The bottom line is that these users are highly engaged, loyal to their favorite sports sites, and more likely to visit fringe sports pages like fantasy sites and blogs.

Über fans are a marketer’s dream
Because of their never-ending desire for sports information, Über fans are much more receptive to ads from sponsors who offer them free sports content:

• 74 percent are more likely to pay attention to an ad on a sports site.
• 78 percent expect to see ads on a free fantasy sports site.
• 73 percent agree that if a company is advertising on a sports site, their products will fit with their interests.
• 72 percent agree that brands that advertise on a sports site are cool.
• 69 percent are more likely to purchase products from a company that advertises on a sports site

They also make excellent product advocates, because they are early adopters and key influencers:

• 69 percent own a smartphone/iPhone.
• 88 percentown an HDTV/flat screen.
• 47 percent strongly agree that they tend to advocate a great new product to everyone they know.
• 45 percent strongly agree that online shopping is a great way to buy products.

Targeting the Über sports fan
Über sports fans consume the entire sports site, from the homepage to blogs and stats pages. But they have higher ad expectations, so to effectively reach them, your advertising must be fresh, relevant and compelling.

As Über fans go deeper into sports sites, an interesting thing happens—engagement and connection with the content grows. This represents a significant opportunity for advertisers to leverage this increase in ad attention with relevant ads. It doesn’t mean ads must be limited to certain categories, however. Despite fans’ and advertisers’ expectations, Über fans are in fact interested in a wide range of products, including groceries food/ beverage, home goods, pet care supplies, clothing, books, music and electronics.

Engagement is the key to increasing your connection to Über fans. Advertising should be optimized as sports users go deeper into the site, to help create a better experience and maximize engagement.

How to optimize your advertising for Über sports fans

• Avoid repetition. Develop multiple creative versions of ads and rotate them constantly using frequency caps.
• Create ads that are relevant to the sports fan. But don’t discount the value of a wide range of categories, including household goods, entertainment, technology and travel.
• Create ads that are relevant to the sports site. Stay consistent with your subject matter and experiment with ads that interact with the page.
• Make your ads informative. Sports users value ads that provide information, more than entertaining, funny or trendy messages.
• Target the pages with which Über sports fans are most engaged. Consider advertising more heavily on blog, fantasy and draft sites.
• Consider sponsoring sports content. Leverage the halo effect; fans appreciate sponsors who provide valuable sports content for free.
• Cross-sell to reach consumers outside of their sports lives. You can retarget Yahoo! Sports users as they visit other sites in the network, like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance.

— The Yahoo! B2B Market Research Team

(Editor’s Note: Let’s go Giants and happy opening day at Mayes Feild!)

According to CNET, iPad sales could top seven million this year alone. And Yahoo’s on the case: Today we announced Yahoo! Entertainment for the iPad.

From today’s Yodel Anecdotal blog: “Using editorialized, real-time content, Yahoo! Entertainment surfaces and recommends TV shows, entertainment news, TV listings, book reviews, and a wide variety of popular videos from across the Web.”

That’s corporatese for saying that this thing is going to be huge, a lot of fun for users, and a potentially enormous opportunity for advertisers as we scale up our already vast entertainment audience, which currently draws some 200 million visitors a month worldwide.

To get the rest of the story, click over to Yodel Anecdotal.

— The Team

“Yahoo’s mobile initiatives encompass the mobile Web, paid and ad-supported applications, as well as mobile search” writes Mobile Marketer’s Dan Butcher. “The company is especially bullish about the prospects for mobile advertising for this year and beyond.”

Darn right we are. Butcher goes on to interview David Katz, Vice President of North America at Yahoo! Mobile.

“For a long time we’ve been saying next year is the year of mobile advertising, but this year we’re saying last year was it, 2009 was the breakout year,” said Katz in the interview. “What’s next is getting much more creative about mobile-specific advertising experiences.”

Click over to Mobile Marketer for the rest of the story.

— Michael Mattis

This morning at the CTIA 2010 conference in entertainment-loving Las Vegas, Yahoo! announced two cool new location-aware apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch handhelds—Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search and Yahoo! Search. These two new apps are not only fun—you won’t be downloading “stoopid stuff” with these apps—they’re also useful. Really useful.

For more on Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search and Yahoo! Search, visit the Yahoo! Mobile Blog.

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, or CTIA, now celebrating its 25th year, represents a $1 trillion global marketplace. And its annual conference is the place in the wireless world to do business, learn and network.

What: CTIA 2010
Where: Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada
When: March 22 to 25
Why: Because you don’t want to gamble on a sure thing—mobile

Sessions span everything from hardware to apps, advertising opportunities to form factors… and beyond. Yahoo!, naturally, will be there. In fact, we’ll be on the floor in the sessions and making the rounds—discussing our “science, art and scale” approach to the mobile world.

To help you with all the “speed networking” you’ll be doing, we’ll have our trademark coffee cart set up, where you can enjoy a latte on us.

In addition, look for two Yahoo! speaking events featuring two important Yahoos. First Paul Cushman, our Director of Mobile Sales Strategy, will be offering “Mobile Marketing—Secrets of Mobile Engagement” at a pre-conference event on Monday, March 22. Second, don’t miss “Mobile Internet’s Strategies for Accelerated Growth,” by David Katz, Vice President, Americas Region, Yahoo! Mobile.

Of course, we’ll be tweeting and posting to our Facebook page, as well as doing a little live blogging.

See you there. Or see you here. You can bet on it. And you’ll want to consider going all in on mobile.

— Michael Mattis

This week, your indefatigable Yahoo! Advertising correspondents went on a field trip to the 4A’s “Transformation 2010” conference in San Francisco. (Those 4A’s stand for the American Association of Advertising Agencies.) While there, we did old the meet and greet, tweeted, and posted to Facebook our take-aways from some the smartest minds in the advertising world. We even did a little live blogging and took some video, too. (Lookin’ good, Carol!)

Below is a round-up of some the most interesting sessions, in case you couldn’t be there in person.

How Social Media Has Transformed the Communications Landscape
Who: Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, The Huffington Post
What: Huffington spoke with considerable humor about how the Internet in general and social media in particular have changed the way people interact with media content. “We”—meaning users as well as media outlets—“are consuming news, sharing news, developing news. We are all part of that story,” she noted. Online readership is up 34 million in the past few years, while newspaper viewership is down 7 million. The key for understanding and engaging the online medium for publishers and advertisers is  “transparency and authenticity.” At the 4A’s conference, she mentioned what she calls the “four E’s:” engagement, energy, empathy, enthusiasm, enrichment. These are the real drivers of audience behavior online.
So What?: The shift in attention to online presents a huge opportunity for advertisers and marketers because the most engaged consumers are the most loyal consumers. Notable quote: “If Carol Bartz is outspoken, what does it make me, a demure shrinking violet?” Probably not, Ms. Huffington.

More on this session via AdAge.

How Social Media is Transforming Everything
Who: Pete Blackshaw, EVP Digital Strategic Services Nielsen; Ian Schafer, CEO Deep Focus; Bryan Wiener CEO 360i
What: Traditionally, paid media is the hub and earned media are the spokes; social media puts earned media at the center.
So What?: Tremendous opportunity to measure consumer reactions and emotions as real-time feedback holds us accountable. Social media does not replace TV, it enables communication and feeds curiosity and advocacy in the purchase funnel. Social will also never scale like TV and won’t get the same margins. Agencies need to reengineer themselves for this new business model.

A Message From Magazine Industry Leaders
Who: Cathleen Black, President, Hearst Corporation; Ann Moore, Chairman and CEO, Time Inc.;
Jack Griffin, President, National Media Group; Jann Wenner of Wenner Media
What: Speakers talked about how the vitality of magazines has not been compromised by the Internet but complemented by it. It is a myth that magazines are losing readership; readership is actually up dramatically, especially with young people. As long as magazines continue to innovate, they will remain popular.
So What?: Digital companies should work with magazines to develop new ways to deliver magazine content and advertising Notable quote: “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.”

More on this session via AdWeek.

YouthQuake: Transformation of Young Customers
Who:  Jeffrey Cole, Director, Center for the Digital Future, USC Annenberg School and Sr. Associate, Media Link LLC
What: Based on consumer data collected from his research, Cole says that just concentrating on what 12-24-year-old customers want at the time sets a bad precedent for advertisers, because what you really want is to figure out how their purchasing power will emerge as go into their “prime purchasing years.”
So What?: Cole says youth are all about social media and predicts the death of print newspapers within 6 years because of falling readership among this age group. To capture and keep teens into the future, advertisers must turn to social media. Notable quote: “While they don’t read newspapers, teens are active social media users and they will stay in communities for the rest of their lives.”

Transforming Marketing
Who: Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for, VivaKi (Publicis Groupe)
What: Tobaccowala talked about talent retention for agencies. He riffed on Yahoo! CEO, Carol Bartz’ Science, Art and Scale keynote, concentrating on what he feels is the most important factor for getting and keep the best talent: “art.” Talented young people don’t want to just sell soda pop, they want to create art and messages that reach people’s hearts and minds. He made a distinction between what he called “builders” who create great, inspiring advertising and “bean counters” who run the spreadsheets. Today advertising is too often run by the bean counters and it needs to get back to its creative roots.
So What?: While advertisers and agencies need metrics, we also need to inspire creativity. Notable quote: “During the Renaissance, they built; they did not manage only, they did not data read. They built, they painted, they sculpted.”

More on this session via AdAge.

It’s Still All About the Data
Who: Bruce Biegel, Managing Director, Winterberry Group LLC ; Adam Gerber, Chief Marketing Officer, Quantcast ; Scott Hagedorn, CEO, PHD USA ; Bryan Wiener, CEO, 360i ; David Smith, CEO, Mediasmith Inc.; Geoff Ramsey, Co-Founder and CEO, eMarketer
What: The effectiveness of advertising and media is only as good as its intended targets. Some say 28 percent of U.S. marketers plan to shift larger portion of their budgets to online over the next few years. Other estimates range from 59 percent to 70 percent. The group also discussed the advent demand-side platforms.
So What?: If agencies can scale and cooperate with publishers, we should be able to normalize ad data, plug in solutions and be able to plan better and do better post analysis. But we have to “scale that and scale that rapidly.”

For more on DSPs see “Audiences on Demand.”

Are Tablets the Future of Media?
Who: Chris Anderson, EIC, Wired Magazine
What: Anderson talked about how he thinks tablet computers, such as the iPad, will change the way people read magazine content and how advertisers will reach them. He noted that tablets “could provide the most measurable advertising ever”—and a rich experience for the user online or off.
So What?: A tablet computer user doesn’t always have to be online to view magazine content that has previously been downloaded, and the device and programming will continue to track what the user is seeing even in an offline state and that could be a big opportunity for advertisers and agencies.

More on this session via MediaWeek.

How New ‘Cloud’ Technology Can Transform the Agency Enterprise
Who: Greg Smith, Chief Information Officer, McCann Worldgroup
What: On-the-ground ROI benefits for all agencies from the emerging technology of cloud technology— Internet computing that shares computer resources instead of using software or storage on a local PC.
Technology has to be included in biz decisions and cloud technology is playing massive role at McCann
So What?: Agencies need to think like software companies. Currently 70% of tech budgets are spent on maintenance. Cloud tech will help save on those costs and let agencies concentrate on creative. Kelley Blue Book saved $100k by shifting to cloud. McCann itself saved 30 percent on tech costs. Quote: “21st century ads are not something just looked at, but something to be used.”

Transformative Research on Integrated Media
Who: Artie Bulgrin, Senior Vice President for Research, ESPN
What: Bulgrin says while TV is still the biggest medium, many ESPN users are now multimedia users (46 percent) are now multi-platform users, who cross media freely, representing 71 percent of its overall media time. In 2008, Disney and ABC TV created a new, state-of-the-art media lab in Austin, Texas, where media users are researched so that the company can better understand consumer behavior with regard to both content and advertising through advanced techniques like eye- and skin-tracking.
So What?: One notable finding of the lab was that ads in mobile often out-performed ads on the PC-based Internet, and that It only takes two seconds for user to process and recognize a brand. If Bulgrin’s findings are correct, it confirms assertion that the message is as important, if not more so, than the medium.

More on this session via MediaPost.

Lastly, enjoy 4A’s Flickr page, as well as our own.

— Michael Mattis, Jeff Sweat, Christine Tseng

In the third of our three-part series, Paul Cushman, Director of Mobile Sales Strategy at Yahoo!, outlines the importance of measurement in any mobile strategy and offers a simple formula for doing it right. For Part I, click here. For Part II, click here.

I’m shocked by the number of clients who start a mobile campaign with no idea how they are going to measure success. I’m not talking necessarily about goals, as this is a new channel to many brands and setting benchmarks is a legitimate and relevant approach at the start.

But make sure you are measuring and that you talk to your mobile advertising vendors about this. There are good in-house and third-party solutions out there that can improve the data a campaign generates.

Why is this important? Say the client comes in and says “I want an iPhone app!” (Let’s ignore the fact that this is akin to walking into the agency and saying “I want to do radio ads” without first asking whether or not you should even be doing radio).

Instead of jumping in an spending a load of money on production in a medium you have never marketed in before, why not run a series of test campaigns in mobile, with various offers and simple landing pages and sites (very cheap to build) and see if the audience that engages with you in mobile is even on an iPhone? What if they’re on Blackberries? Or T-Mobile?

Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone is a fantastic device and is responsible for an explosion in mobile Web adoption. But this is marketing and apps are not easy to build, so you should also consider whether you can achieve more, for less investment, and quicker, without one.

After all, the CTR for mobile web is 135 percent higher than it is on apps.

Parting thoughts: Don’t Panic
Have you ever read Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?” In this smart, comic sci-fi novel, Adams imagined the first, true, universal mobile device—a fictional proto-iPhone, if you will—one that offered access to almost all knowledge, anywhere, anytime.“Don’t Panic” was the advice on its front cover.

So allow me to give you my guide to the mobile universe, starting with the dirty little secret about Paul Cushman’s job. Keep this on the QT, but:

This mobile thing? It’s the Internet, just a little bit smaller. Got that? Let’s take a step back and look at this mobile thing shall we?

• Portals and publishers have these things called sites.
• They offer advertising on these sites in the form of display and search ads.
• Users click on these ads, and go to an advertiser’s site or landing page.
• We track these clicks and behavior, see what drove that performance and buy more of the good stuff. We call this optimization.

Has anybody seen this movie before?

So, don’t panic: you know 80 percent or more of this already. Just focus on defining your strategy, see where mobile fits, keep it simple, track everything, and see what works

Because you know what? It’s about the message, not the medium.

—Paul Cushman, Director of Mobile Sales Strategy, Yahoo!