Yahoo! Inc. has just announced the launch of four new advertising formats, which will bring rich media advertising to iPhones and sharing capabilities on social networking sites to advertisers in Asia.

The digital media company creates deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe.

With the proliferation of smartphones across Asia, advertisers and marketers can now engage with their consumers in an interactive manner through a range of advertising formats that have been built for the iPhone. These formats include adhesion banners, expandable banners and click to video banners. Yahoo! has also launched a social ad unit that has been designed to prolong the engagement with users and to promote the sharing of display advertisements on Yahoo! properties through popular social networks.

According to Yvonne Chang, Vice President and Managing Director of Yahoo! Southeast Asia, “Yahoo! has redefined the creative canvas for digital marketers by delivering audiences to advertisers through the science we build into our advertising products. Every day we are pushing back the boundaries of the Internet and digital landscape with innovative ad solutions such as these new advertising formats we are introducing today.”

“As users spend more time consuming and sharing content on their smartphones, they are likely to be influenced by mobile advertising. Leveraging this trend across the region for users to access the Internet through mobile devices such as smartphones, Yahoo! is offering marketers an opportunity to experiment with new digital canvases, to engage and target audiences through sophisticated mobile advertising solutions”, she adds.

The four new Yahoo! advertising formats include:

  • Expandable Banner: designed to engage iPhone users with a larger canvas. The ad format expands downwards and has the capability to cover nearly two thirds of an iPhone screen.
  • Click to Video Banner: shows a video clip when a user taps on the banner right from the ad on an iPhone. A video plays full screen on the native video player and users are brought back to the website to resume their session at the end of the video.
  • Adhesion Banner: remains fixed to a place on a screen while a user scrolls through content on their device. This ensures an ad does not get lost while a user is looking through content on a device.
  • Social Ads: designed to support existing online advertising campaigns, social ads allow users to comment on and share an ad on social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Buzz and by email directly from the ad format. Social ads are expected to generate word-of-mouth brand impact, exponential reach and increase viewer engagement levels.

Each ad contains a widget that will enable self-contained apps to be shared with full functionality at any location or on any platform. Instead of receivers of the content linking back to a destination site to view an ad or video, they can experience the video and ‘share’ functionality within their own Facebook page. Advertisers will be able to gather consumer insights through capturing data such as the frequency an ad has been shared on social networks to derive a sharing multiplier effect.

The social ad format is available immediately across Southeast Asia and the other formats will be available from March 2011.

Source: Yahoo!