Yahoo! Sports has a Shredtacular Winter Olympics

Great coverage results in record-breaking traffic, click-through rates and engagement

We’re still marveling at the Winter Olympians’ amazing achievements. South Korean luminary Kim Yu-Na earned more points than any previous figure skater.

Snowboarder Shaun White defied the laws of physics with his Double McTwist 1260. And Yahoo! Sports dominated the field as the most visited online destination for 2010 Winter Olympics coverage.

More than 32 million unique visitors chose Yahoo’s site for Olympics coverage, besting its closest competitors NBCOlympics.com and ESPN, which both counted 19 million unique visitors each during February 12 to 28 according to comScore. Yahoo! Sports received more than 40 million total unique visitors during the Winter Olympics, breaking the monthly record in the online sports category and exceeding its closest competitor by more than 19 million unique visitors.

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4A’s Conference Round-Up

The Yahoo! Advertising blog’s got you covered

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.

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Segmenting segmentation; bad tech predictions; activity streams are the new black; consumers using online search for offline research, and more

What segmentation is right for you?
“There are three main types of segmentation,” says ClickZ’s Neil Mason. “Demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation, and attitudinal segmentation. But which one is best? It really depends on what problem you’re trying to solve.”

The Internet’s doomed—and other bad tech predictions
Writing in Slate, Farhad Manjoo takes on the 1995 prediction that the Internet was doomed to fail, and discusses how you can avoid making bad predictions about technology in the future.

“Activity streams?”
It’s an idea for a new, free, more open Internet model, and it may just be the next big thing. And Yahoo! is right there, innovating. ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick explains what activitystreams are and what they may mean for the future.

Even if you’re brick and mortar, you still gotta be online
This comes by way of Greg Sterling over at Screenwerk. According to a recent poll, 94 percent of consumers did some research online prior to making a purchase. While e-commerce only makes up four percent of U.S. retail sales, people overwhelmingly (61 percent) use Internet search to research a purchase.

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Carol Bartz’ “Steely Will”

From the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle…

The S.F. Chron’s James Temple says Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz is “steely willed and blunt,” with “deep roots” in her “Midwestern work ethic and can-do attitude.” She shows “decisiveness and nerve.” And she’s a “tough lady.” We agree.  Check out this exclusive interview.

Happy Birthday, Sweet 15

Yahoo! invites its 600 million worldwide users to join the celebration

Not that long ago, Jerry Yang was known as the Stanford grad student who ran a great website about sumo wrestling. He and his lab partner David Filo even named their computers after two Hawaii-born sumo champions: Akebono and Konishiki, respectively. Those PCs were where the duo kept the giant, expanding, categorized, and—in a leap beyond what others were doing—searchable list of useful web links.

Fifteen years ago today, that hobby was incorporated as Yahoo!, supposedly from their self-deprecating backronym, “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

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Talk About A-Plus

Yahoo! at San Francisco’s 4A conference

Did you ever see the 1950 classic “All About Eve?” In it, Bette Davis plies the classic line, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Well Sunday, Feb. 28 begins the 4A Conference at the Union Square Hilton in San Francisco. At this fab confab, advertising’s best will appear and show off their newest and most fabulous wares. It promises to be a bumpy but fantastic conference, one full of surprises.

As the 4A the website says, it’s a chance for advertisers and agencies to “Collaborate with and ask questions of one another. Listen to leaders who have first-hand experience in transforming their own businesses to meet the emerging needs of a new era. Be a part of the bigger picture, the solutions to the time-consuming age-old questions of monetization and evolution.” That sounds pretty good. We can’t wait.

Here’s the up-shot on the Yahoo! down-low:

Sunday, Feb. 28

• 6:00  to 7 P.M: Opening Night Reception Sponsored by Yahoo! — Cityscape Room, Hilton

Monday, March 1

• 10 A.M: Carol Bartz, Transforming Yahoo! — Continental Ballroom, 2nd Floor
  Noon to 7 P.M: Yahoo! Transformation Lounge — Free custom lattes and live storyboard artist, lobby level
• 5:30 to 7 P.M: Cocktails in 4A’s Transformation Lounge (which includes  a special Yahoo! space)
  7 P.M to 10 P.M: Dinner in Continental Ballroom sponsored by Microsoft

Tuesday, March 2

• 8 A.M. to 6 P.M Yahoo! Transformation Lounge Open — Free Custom lattes and live storyboard artist

Can’t be there? No problem. We will be, live blogging the events, tweeting and posting to the Yahoo! Advertising Facebook page.

—The Team

Yahoos at SMX West

Attending the SMX confab in Santa Clara next week? Check out our line-up of speakers and panelists

It’s no secret that we Yahoos are big fans of Danny Sullivan—the smooth jazz of SEO—and his Search Marketing Expo conference series. Next week, March 2 to 4, SMX West convenes at the Santa Clara Convention Center in (where else?) Santa Clara, Calif. Come check out what Danny has to say, and all the tips and trick that can help you be a better search marketer.

Of course, Yahoo! will be present at booth 216. We’ll also be giving away coffee in Yahoo!-branded mugs, as well as other fun tchotchkes, at our own coffee cart. We’ve also got a fabulous line-up of Yahoo! speakers to answer your questions about such hot-button topics as the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. 

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Yahoolympics scores 17.5 million fans

Yahoo! attracts largest online Olympic audience, Feb. 8 to 14

Whether it’s figure skating, freestyle skiing , snowboarding, hockey, or this year’s big game, curling, Winter Olympics fans are turning online in record numbers.  And Yahoo!—the single most visited site for the Winter Olympics—is winning the gold in terms of unique visitors.

Yahoo’s Olympics site attracted 9.3 million unique visitors from February 8 to 14, according to comScore. That’s the largest online Olympics audience for the period, which included the Opening Ceremony and the first three days of competition, while Yahoo! Sports attracted more than 17.5 million unique visitors. Yahoo’s Olympics site surpassed both NBC’s Olympics site (6.5 million unique visitors) and ESPN (8.4 million unique visitors) during the same period.

“The Olympics are one of those events that people aren’t willing to wait until prime yime to find out what happened,”  says Kyle Laughlin,  Head of Yahoo! Sports and Games.  “The team did a fantastic job putting a plan in place to deliver the right content at the right time for our users.”

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Yahoo! and Twitter team up; advertising is good; ad groups 101; Yahoo’s head of search on the Microsoft alliance, and more

Yahoo! gets all Twitterpated
Last night we announced a new partnership with Twitter that integrates Twitter’s real-time social experiences with Yahoo’s global network of more than 600 million users. Together with the recently announced Facebook integration, this relationship is a key part of advancing our social strategy, transforming Yahoo! into a highly customizable social experience that lets people unify their activity from their many social experiences across the Web. Good for users. Great for advertisers. For more details, head on over to Yodel Anecdotal.

Affiliates beware: Cali sales tax looming
Many search and display advertiser run affiliate networks, whereby they become the middle-men between consumers and suppliers. It’s a good business and one that provides an essential service. But the State of California is considering imposing a sales tax on affiliate sites that have suppliers in the state. While aimed at the big boys like Amazon.com and Overstock.com, the law could affect any affiliate site with relationships in the Golden State. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carolyn Said explains.  

Online ads help shoppers save
Advertising is often taken to the pillory for being self-serving. That’s just not fair. Good advertising serves an essential need in society. Without it, how would you know that there’s a better—or cheaper—mousetrap out there? eMarketer explains how online advertising is helping consumers save cash in tough times.

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Case Study: Buying Time

How Sitewire used the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Tool to cut its workload

Sitewire, a digital media agency whose clients include the Darden Restaurant Group, which runs Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and other popular restaurant chains, wanted to ease its search marketing workload. The company expressed its concern to Yahoo! and became one of the first Sponsored Search clients to try the beta version of the new Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop, an application that allows users to easily and cost effectively create and manage Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns.

Learn how the company saved time and effort over at the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog.