yahoo-shopping-aims-to-stand-out-in-commerce-discovery-with-rakuten-cashback-rewards

Rakuten and Verizon Media have partnered to deliver commerce experiences for Rakuten merchants and Yahoo users this holiday season. The offering is a differentiator for Yahoo Shopping.

Rakuten runs a cashback and coupon site with more than 3,500 merchants that used to be known as eBates. With the new partnership, Verizon Media is offering Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Mail users access to exclusive cashback rewards from more than 50 online retailers through Rakuten, including Nordstrom Rack, Nike, Disney and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Why we should care

Verizon Media, which owns the Yahoo properties as well as publications HuffPost, TechCrunch and others, is focusing its monetization efforts on digital commerce.

The new Yahoo Shopping launched this fall. It features price comparisons, a promotions calendar, trending deals and now cashback offers. Yahoo Mail web and app users will see promotions that take them to a “Rakuten-powered shopping experience.”

Check out the Digital Commerce Marketing track at SMX West.

“At Verizon Media we’re closing the loop between content and commerce, and providing engaging journeys for our users to help them discover the things they love,” said Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Verizon Media in a statement. He said a rewards program has been part of the plan since launching the commerce experiences on Yahoo, Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Mail.

More on the news

  • Yahoo Shopping will be the hub powering commerce-related experiences across Verizon Media brands, including curated and branded content on its publications.
  • Verizon has also introduced shoppable video and editorial content, hotspot images this fall, and said it is continuing its successful immersive AR/XR ad experiences.
  • Earlier this month, Verizon Media launched a shoppable video series with tennis star Serena Williams on Yahoo Shopping. Users can click to purchase S by Serena products featured in the videos.


About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.



yahoo-groups-to-remove-all-content-december-14

Yahoo has made the decision to no longer allow users to upload content to the Yahoo Groups site. Beginning October 28, you won’t be able to upload any more content to the site, and as of December 14 all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. You’ll have until that date to save anything you’ve uploaded.

What features will go away?

  • Files
  • Polls
  • Links
  • Photos
  • Folders
  • Calendar
  • Database
  • Attachments
  • Conversations
  • Email Updates
  • Message Digest
  • Message History

What will happen to the site?

The Yahoo Groups site will continue to exist, however, all public groups will be made private or restricted. Any new group members will need to request an invite or be invited by an admin. Admins will still be able to manage various group settings, though some functionality will be limited.

What will happen on October 28?

On October 28, you will no longer be able to upload any content to the site. To share info with members of your groups, you’ll continue to be able to do so via email.

How can I keep my Yahoo Groups content?

Will I be able to use Yahoo Groups going forward?

You’ll still be able to communicate with your groups via email and search for private groups on the site. In addition, admins will continue to have limited access to group settings and administration tools.

with-loss-of-yahoo-and-image-search,-google-shopping-search-partner-traffic-nosedives

Click traffic from the Google search partner network took two major blows in early 2019. The first was Yahoo’s move to begin showing only Microsoft Ads-powered sponsored listings following a more than a three-year stint in which some of Yahoo’s listings were powered by Google. The second was Google’s update to bring ads featured in image search out from the partner network and into the core Google Search Network.

Here we evaluate a sample of long-standing Tinuiti (my employer) advertisers to assess the effects of these changes to the share of Google Shopping traffic coming from search partners, the relative value and cost of that traffic, and what it all means for advertisers.

Search partner click share falls dramatically across device types

As you can see from the chart below, search partner traffic once accounted for a significant share of Google Shopping clicks, and in August 2017 was at 16% for desktop. In August 2019, that figure was just 3%, with share on tablets and phones at 2% and 1%, respectively.

here.



About The Author

new-yahoo-logo

Yahoo is the pioneering web portal and search engine that helps hundreds of millions of users around the world find the information they need online. Pentagram has worked with Yahoo on a refresh of its visual identity that captures the exuberant personality of the brand and reimagines it for the future.

Pentagram collaborated closely with Yahoo leadership on the project, the first significant change to the brand since the previous logo was introduced in 2013. The update coincides with the launch of new products and enhancements, including a reimagined Yahoo Mail app, and signals a strategic change for the company as it prepares to introduce other products and services over the coming year.

The identity reflects a new brand strategy for Yahoo that focuses on helping users find a more personalized, customized experience online. In the decades since Yahoo first launched, the internet has grown to be so big and ubiquitous, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with information. With its new products, Yahoo will empower users to better sift out irrelevant parts of the digital world, giving them more control of what they see and when they see it. The strategy positions Yahoo as an “amplification brand,” amplifying the things that matter, helping to “amplify you.” The idea is neatly visualized in Yahoo’s exclamation point, a punctuation mark that literally stands for amplification.

This strategy of simplicity and amplification is expressed in a new logo that is simpler and more flexible than its predecessor, and that looks back to the original, quirky 1996 logo. The new wordmark is set in Centra No. 2 Extrabold, and the letters of the logotype have been modified to be more geometric and compact. The exclamation mark has been italicized for emphasis, as it has been in every iteration of the logo since the company’s founding. The “y” and “!” of the logo are both set at an angle of 22.5 degrees, a forward tilt that suggests a sense of momentum and excitement. The angle––precisely 1/16th of a circle––is the basis for visual language built around angles and incremental slices.

As with the original logo, the new identity captures the voice of a brand named after an exclamation of joy and discovery, and still looks like it should be shouted or yodeled (”yahoOOOOoooo!”). The repeating circles of the “a,” “o”s and the dot on the exclamation point echo of the audio mnemonic of the yodel.

The Pentagram designers worked with Yahoo to iterate through and evaluate a wide range of options—some that were more evocative of the original 1996 logo with its offset baseline and random angles, and some that were completely new. The team conducted in-depth research with employees and stakeholders as part of the process.

The logo has been optimized to work across various platforms and scales, from the small canvas of a mobile app to the side of a building. The identity is further streamlined with a simple “y!” monogram, useful for favicons and social media icons. The monogram is also the foundation for a cohesive brand architecture that locks up the “y!” with various channels to create sub-brands for Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and Yahoo Weather.

Of course, the identity appears in purple, Yahoo’s signature color since 2003. (Internally, the rebranding was called “Project Purple.”) The designers refined the palette and made it more contemporary, selecting a primary purple (a bright shade they called “grape jelly”) and secondary purples (“hulk pants” and “malbec”), as well as accent colors.

yahoo-redesigns-its-logo-to-remind-you-that-yahoo-exists

Yahoo isn’t exactly a popular company these days. But while it’s been down for a long time, it’s not out of the game yet, and today the company is here to remind everyone of that with a new logo that practically screams out (in a newly selected hue of purple): “We still exist and have somehow not imploded like a decayed, hollowed-out husk of a dying oak tree!”

The new logo looks to paint a fresh start for the long-beleaguered company. Designed by Pentagram (the firm behind the bold, sans-serif designs for Citibank, New York City’s OMNY system, and the Cooper Hewitt museum), the new Yahoo logo marks the first redesign for the company since its big overhaul under the leadership of then-CEO Marissa Mayer in 2013.


The new logo lacks the personality of the 2013 design, with a lowercase, sans-serif type that makes it resemble a startup that’s just bought its first print ad campaign on the subway. The only real distinctive quality here is Yahoo’s iconic exclamation point, now at an even more aggressive angle that suggests that it is trying to run away from the rest of the logo. (Pentagram explains that “the ‘y’ and ‘!’ of the logo are both set at an angle of 22.5 degrees, a forward tilt that suggests a sense of momentum and excitement.”)

Yahoo, after a decade of waning relevance, tried to reinvent itself in the early 2010s by bringing on a new CEO, buying companies like Tumblr and Flickr, and beating Apple and Disney to the punch with original streamed TV programming. But Mayer’s changes didn’t save the company. Tumblr and Flickr now have new owners, the TV and news initiatives crumbled, and Yahoo itself was sold to Verizon. It’s barely a flicker of its former self, notable more for the sales and scandals around its products than any actual impact on the world of technology at large.

Along with the new logo, Yahoo also announced an updated version of its flagship Yahoo Mail app (which the company is presumably hoping that customers have forgotten saw all 3 billion of its users hacked in 2013, and which was scanning users’ emails for data to sell to advertisers as recently as August 2018). The new app features dedicated tabs for attachments, deals, and a “Grocery View” feature that shows grocery discounts nearby. There’s also a new one-click unsubscribe option, along with a design that features the new logo.