Coming to a City Near You: Yahoo’s NewFront
By Lisa Utzschneider, Chief Revenue Officer
This year, we’re bringing the show to you! In lieu of hosting one NewFront in New York City, our team is excited to launch a series of localized events across the country to discuss the massive and transformational growth of video advertising in more intimate settings with our agency and brand partners. Our consumers want choice and flawless access to exceptional video content across screens, so naturally we’re offering our advertisers the same. From high-quality video experiences across our News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle properties, to our native video and broader programmatic video solutions, we’re looking forward to sharing updates personalized for each advertiser's objectives in a series of local events – because when it comes to video, it’s not a “one size fits all” solution.
Last year, we doubled down on short form and live video programming across our key verticals, which dramatically increased audience engagement and delivered great wins for our advertisers. Driven by first of its kind live finance experiences, the appetite for balanced political coverage and a unique take on the sports experience, we saw an 85% lift in time spent watching video across our properties. This is a testament to the best-in-class content creation and curation that our users and advertisers expect from Yahoo.
Here are some highlights to date:
Our Yahoo Finance audience spent nearly 13 million hours watching our three daily live shows (Market Movers, Midday Movers and The Final Round) in 2016. Viewers also flocked to signature events such as our first Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit (2.6 million live views and 12.2 million total views) and our exclusive live stream of the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders meeting which attracted one million live viewers, with an additional 17 million tuning in to the reshow. We’re excited to bring back this successful event on Saturday May 6, 2017!
Yahoo Sports is a top destination for sports fans to follow their favorite teams and play fantasy sports using our award-winning apps and offerings. For the past 11 seasons, millions of fans have tuned in to Yahoo’s Fantasy Football Live show for our expert commentary. Complementing this flagship program is Fearless Forecast, a quick-hitting video series that offers advice from our sports experts, which has increased views by 65% year over year. Additionally, views of The Vertical’s NBA Trade Deadline show increased 25% year over year.
Yahoo News is the destination to discover and understand top stories that matter now. After an unconventional election season, we’re seeing unprecedented audiences for our video content. With an unbiased and trusted approach, our coverage of the elections garnered over 16.6 million video views and 65 million page views.
Yahoo Style & Beauty is a category leader that celebrates unique style with a mix of video programming covering celebrity trends and relatable tips. This content is attracting an important audience of 18-34 year olds, with unique visitors in this demographic up 200% in 2016.
Following a banner year of events, in 2017 we will provide access to more best-in-class live events and the most important stories for our audience, all in a visually compelling way. We’re excited to share our slate of programming and new concepts during personalized meetings with our top advertisers.
More than ever, we’re helping brands engage the most powerful audiences online, with video offerings that can be tailored to their marketing objectives and buying preferences. In fact, video inventory across our properties increased 29% year over year and time spent viewing video ads on Yahoo increased 42%. What’s more, we have opened up new ways for advertisers to make programmatic video and native video advertising central to their strategies, and the response has been clear. Our BrightRoll DSP and Exchange drove an 89% increase in video revenue year over year, and native video revenue grew 91% year over year. We have continued to reimagine the mobile experience with an emphasis on native video ads and our Yahoo Tiles format that provides greater interactivity. We’re also building successful, data-driven brand campaigns that take full advantage of our video capabilities with Yahoo Storytellers, our full service content marketing studio. This year you will see a shift to more custom integrations and campaigns, going well beyond your standard video advertising packages.
We’re committed to helping our advertisers bring together content, data and technology to outperform their benchmarks and measure the full scope of their campaigns. When it comes to video, we see tremendous opportunity as we focus on exceptional content across our key verticals and continuously enhancing our ad offerings. With a series of smaller, more intimate events, we look forward to helping our advertisers capitalize on this growth.
