Yahoo held its Sydney Newfront presentation yesterday afternoon and, frankly, everyone seemed rather impressed.
While there was none of ARN’s pomp, the presentation was sharp, focused and beautifully short with a sub-one hour running time.
Was that for the lack of announcements? No. There was one very significant piece of news, as well as some smaller but still important reveals. Instead, new head honcho Maddie Basso and team kept things swift, focusing on what’s coming rather than labouring on what has been.
“Great Newfronts. Short, snappy, to the point, didn’t drag on too long, hit all the right notes, some good innovation, some good new to market stuff but also solidifying where they’ve come from and what they’re actually trying to deliver for clients, which is great results through a great partnership,” Kaimera’s founder and chief digital and product officer Trent McMillan told B&T after the formalities concluded, a sentiment many shared.
Cheers to that – Yahoo’s MixIn partnership
The biggest news was a first-to-market commerce media partnership Endeavour Group’s MixIn Retail Media Network.
The partnership allows advertisers to run campaigns through Yahoo DSP that harness the power of MixIn’s data network, combining online and offline purchase insights with Yahoo’s advanced targeting and measurement capabilities.
For alcohol brands, this means activating audiences at the point of intent. For non-alcohol brands, it’s a powerful way to reach consumers based on social behaviour, location and cultural connection.
“This is huge guys,” Basso told the crowd.
“You might know them from their iconic brands BWS and Dan Murphy’s but on top of that, they have the ALH Hotels group which is more than 350 pubs and venues across Australia… The audience reach is incredible, they are more BWS stores in Australia than Macca’s. Together we’re taking commerce media to the next level.”
“It’s great exposure and a good example of what a true partnership can do,” John Finnie, Yahoo’s VP of international sales, who flew in from a frigid Toronto told B&T after the show.
“It allows our clients to utilise Yahoo and MixIn data to get the objectives they need to hit across an omnichannel experience. It’s another way of Yahoo bringing best-in-class data partnerships to the Australian market.
“It’s continuing our deep understanding of commerce media,” Basso told B&T.
“You’ve seen what’s happened with Afterpay where we essentially pioneered their product and helped them build it from the ground up, then constantly growing and evolving that product with them as partnership. With MixIn it shows the market that we know what we’re doing with commerce media and brands launching in that space trust us to deliver a really sound product. We’ve already had three briefs following our Melbourne Newfront [held on Tuesday] and today I’ve already had conversations with multiple people saying we need to chat ASAP.”
Media agency folk were certainly impressed with the offering.
“With the combination of MixIn and Afterpay, I think it’s a pretty powerful capability,” Paige Wheaton, Initiative’s chief investment officer told B&T after the event.
“It’s something I’m really looking forward to digging into and seeing how it can support our clients. For any endemic advertiser, it’s a real no-brainer—for us with Pernod Ricard, it’s super compelling. But then starting to think about how we can use that effectively amongst non-endemic clients and how we can bring them on that journey will be interesting.”
Awaken founder Chris Parker was particularly excited due to the number of alcohol brands it lists as clients.
“We do a lot with MixIn currently, but this is a really exciting place for us to be just starting to buy in a total audience. It’s a really strategic partnership and I think it’s very smart for MixIn to be working with a DSP and particularly Yahoo. It’s something they can grow quite considerably next year. We were chatting about it afterwards and our campaigns that we’re about to launch, we’re going to add this data targeting straightaway,” he told B&T.
“It’s another smart indicator. They’ve got Afterpay data, they’ve got another indicator of people who are spending more at a more premium level, perhaps.”
“With the changing privacy legislation etc., partnerships like this and the ability to target people whether it be contextually or through these arrangements will be so much more powerful than they have been in the past,” added McMillan, adding that the opportunities for endemic and non-endemic brands were “extremely positive”.
Campaign Automation & ESPN
The next largest announcements were the release of a campaign automation tool that automates packaging, targeting, deal mapping, budgeting and creative uploads, allowing agencies to move from briefing to live campaigns faster. It was developed by the Yahoo Australia team and has been sent around the world, much like the Hills Hoist and Tim Tam, as Basso pointed out.
“It’s an absolute game-changer. It automates up to 91 per cent of your campaign setup time. We had a government client that managed to set up more than 1,600 line items in just under five minutes. That’s a task that would usually take up to a full day,” Basso added.
“I think what Yahoo showed today through blueprint and bidding, they were great use cases and very functional. It works… Those use cases, where it’s functional, it works, it’s demonstrable for an agency leader like myself to be able to say, ‘Hey, there’s time savings and the ability for the team to focus more on what’s going to deliver better outcomes for clients’, that’s what I want to hear, not AI for the sake of AI,” McMillan said.
“Wherever we can bring value to clients, whether that’s operational efficiencies, campaign insights or measurement, we see that as a win-win,” said Finnie.
Basso said the tool being born in Australia was a reflection of Yahoo being “really connected” to its agency and brand partners, understanding what they actually need and wanting to make their lives easier—more on that in a second. She added it also showed that there were “high achievers” in the team Down Under.
During Cannes, Yahoo announced a DSP partnership with Netflix. Now, it’s added ESPN on Disney+ inventory.
“It’s good. It’s somewhat hygiene. But the scale of the offering is super important. When you want to be omnichannel, you have to have it. It was good to nod to it but they didn’t labour it. They can read the room in that sense.” said Wheaton.
McMillan and Parker were slightly more effusive.
“We buy across ESPN for a number of brands… this is exciting because we can start bringing them back into total measurement, so we’re not just buying in isolation. Then if we started bringing the MixIn data over the top… it’s quite exciting. It gives us a better framework across the board,” said Parker.
“They’ve been very well positioned as an omnichannel DSP and always have been. The nods to that today resonated with Netflix, Spotify and ESPN. Those integrations show I can get all of that supply in one spot. As an agency, it’s [less] about whether I can or cannot buy particular channels, it’s more about making it easier to access that supply in one spot without needing to have a dedicated DSP doing it,” said McMillan.
Yahoo also announced expanded Marketing Mix Modelling integrations with partners including Mutinex and new collaborations with data clean rooms including Snowflake to give marketers greater visibility into performance across channels.
Easy Breezy
If there was one theme that stood out from the day’s proceedings, it was that Yahoo’s team in Australia want to be the easiest adtech partner to work with. The business has been through some significant changes over the last six months, but Basso and the team’s focus on this matter was refreshing.
“Our local leadership team is deeply embedded in this market,” Finnie told the crowd after walking out to Pulp’s seminal hit Disco 2000.
“They have real experience and credibility and are in the trenches with you each and every day. The team reflects the depth of talent in Australia and I couldn’t be prouder that we have so many strong female leaders on this team.”
“Our clients feel it. We show it day-to-day when we’re working with them and showing them that we’re listening,” Basso told B&T after the show.
“We have such a good retention rate because once we start working with brands and clients, they understand that we’re giving that extra level of support , that we make things really easy and simplify complex systems, products, ideas… We cut through the smoke and mirrors.”
For Wheaton, Parker and McMillan, that attitude is born out in their experience of working with Yahoo.
“The approachability always sits well with me. That for me is a real point of different and I think they’re going to do well with how it resonates in the market,” said Wheaton.
“Having partnerships and partners like Yahoo, where they lean into us and work with us to develop new products, capabilities, tech is so invaluable and you do not see that across any other international-based business. I’m really proud of the work the team do and the partnership we’ve built,” said McMillan.
“We all turn up to work to do good work, with good people and walk out feeling like we’ve achieve something. These guys are always there to support. One thing we’ve found with Yahoo versus many other DSPs is that they’re there to support and it doesn’t feel like a sale. They want to help and grow,” added Parker.
At a time when many are feeling the strain in the industry, that’s a point of difference that may count for a lot more than most realise.
