Yahoo! unveils array of content, ad services

LAS VEGAS — Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer has unveiled updated advertising services, mobile products, and digital magazines for technology and food news, as part of a push to revive sales at the Web portal.

In her first keynote speech as Yahoo! CEO at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Ms Mayer was joined on stage by a parade of employees she has brought on in the past year to build the company’s businesses, including global TV news anchor Katie Couric and Nick D’Aloisio, the teenager who sold news-reading tool Summly to Yahoo! last year.

Ms Mayer, who took the helm at Yahoo! in July 2012, has been working to reinvent the company by revamping products and adding exclusive content to help it compete with Google and Facebook for users and advertisers.

The firm’s new, more unified portfolio of ad tools will make it easier for companies to buy and manage promotions across Yahoo! websites, said Senior Vice-President Scott Burke, who also spoke on stage.

“A common theme across a lot of what you’ve seen today is us simplifying our business,” Ms Mayer said.

“Simplification has been a guiding force in our approach in re-imagining our products, our advertising systems and our future plans.”

The new advertising products include a service to help marketers more accurately target audiences and a new ad exchange, which gives companies more tools to manage promotions on their websites.

Ms Mayer also shared the stage with Mr David Karp, founder of blogging service Tumblr, which Yahoo! acquired for more than US$1 billion (S$1.27 billion) last year. He announced a new initiative to more closely tie Yahoo! advertising with Tumblr’s sponsored post-marketing service.

Yahoo! has rolled out other new advertising formats in recent months. In April, it announced a product that lets marketers place sponsored content in Yahoo!’s stream of news items. The company later expanded the service to more of its properties, including its email, sports and games sites.

In her address, Ms Mayer showcased new digital magazines designed for tablets, such as Yahoo! Tech, a publication that will focus on consumer-technology users who want to keep up with the latest in gadget news.

The company is also rolling out a channel called Yahoo! Food, which will feature photos, recipes and trends in cuisine.

The 18-year-old D’Aloisio showed off a news-digest application for mobile devices that delivers a wrap-up of important events twice daily.

Yahoo! announced other new initiatives in mobile and video, including the acquisition of Aviate, a mobile start-up that helps people interact on wireless gadgets that run Google’s Android operating system. BLOOMBERG