Have you checked out the Yahoo! Insights 2011 Wrap-up & 2012 Outlook e-magazine yet? It features our most popular research studies from 2011, as well as a sneak peek at what we'll address in 2012.

Here are a few more examples of the types of insights you can download from the e-magazine, including tips and findings from studies like “The Power of Relevancy” and “Ethnodynamics”:

• Research: People spend 25% more time fixating on ads that are personally relevant (behaviorally targeted) to them than those that are not. This fixation is related to the potential for a stronger emotional and cognitive response to the ad.

• Tip: When communicating new product features, marketers should use personal relevance to increase cognitive engagement among consumers.

• Research: Contextually relevant (contextually targeted) ads elicit an emotional response that’s almost twice as high as those that aren’t contextually targeted.

• Tip: When the objective is centered around building awareness, contextual relevance can help build Long-term memory of the brand.

• Research: When an ad has both contextual and personal relevance, its impact is even more powerful, producing a stronger emotional response than either condition alone. In this case, pupil dilation increased by an unprecedented 40%, indicating an impressively high level of cognition of the ad.

• Tip: When the intention is to emotionally and cognitively connect with the consumer at the highest levels, contextual and personal relevance combined is most likely to elicit stronger responses than each on its own.

• Research: Each ethnicity has a set of specific drivers that shape ethnic identity. Among the most important drivers are music for African Americans, political beliefs for Hispanics, and eating habits for Asians.

• Tip: Gain a true understanding of the ethnic group you want to connect with, andunderstand what defines them. Avoid stereotypes—keep messaging inspirational and positive.

• Research: Online content preferences for each ethnicity are closely tied to the major drivers of their ethnic identity. Hispanics and Asians in particular look for ethno-specific content online,

• Tip: Be in the content they visit. Consider higher investments in the categories that matter to them ethnically. Be authentic—demonstrate a real value proposition.

• Research: Sixty-two percent of African-Americans want Health and Beauty products marketed specifically to them. Most Hispanics (53%) feel ethnicity matters when it comes to CPG, Entertainment and Clothing. And 50% of Asians stated that ethnicity is important in Entertainment marketing.

• Tip: Target specific ethnicities in the categories that matter most to each group. Feature diversity in your ads, and select an authentic spokesperson.

Check out Yahoo!’s new Insights e-magazine now and get a year's worth of digital marketing tips on mobile strategy, ad effectiveness, social media and more—all in one place.

— Dianne Molina

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Quentin George, IPG Mediabrands

A special event at the Right Media Forum, held Nov. 7 in New York City, was the Display Advertising Industry Panel, which brought together industry experts from the demand and supply sides who took on a wide range of questions posed by the moderator, James Heckman, Yahoo! SVP Strategy and Emerging Business.

The panelists were:

• Quentin George, Chief Innovations Officer, IPG Mediabrands
• David Jacobs, SVP Publisher Services, Advertising.com
• Josh Jacobs, President, Accuen
• Hardeep Bindra, VP and Co-Lead, Right Media

To read comments and insights from panelists, please visit the Right Media Blog.

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Did you know that ethnic minorities represent $2.5 trillion in spending power in the U.S. every year? Would you like to enjoy a piece of that multicultural pie? Well, who wouldn’t!

That’s why Yahoo! is offering a free webinar, designed to help advertisers reach this valuable audience.

What: “Ethnodynamics: Understanding the Principles to Marketing Ethnicity” webinar

When: Tuesday, November 15 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time (That’s tomorrow, people!)

Where: The Internet

How much: Nothing, Bupkis, Nada, Rien, Ingenting, Ei Mitään, Τίποτα, 무가치…

Register now.

– The Team

(Image by rwangsa via Flickr CC 2.0)

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1. Best news for marketers: Facebook redesign boosts reach for brands

According to this cool infographic from SmartBlog, more than 93% of marketers plan to invest more or the same budget in social media in 2012. As you begin allocating dollars to Facebook, keep this new PageLever study that was featured on Advertising Age in mind. It found that lately more of your Facebook fans are seeing fewer of your messages. Apparently, the recent overhaul by the social network appears to have increased brands' reach in terms of the total number of people who see any given message. However, the Facebook tweaks have reduced the frequency with which any given user sees a brand's promotions. I’m thinking we might need a similar cost-benefit analysis if the rumored Twitter redesign hits before year end. Bottom line: Marketers need to stay informed and flexible as the social landscape continues to evolve.

2. Best consumer insight from Nielsen/McKinsey: Social consumers want deals

There’s only one thing I love more than shopping, and that’s finding a deal via social before I go shopping…so I can shop some more. And I’m not alone. According to Nielsen/McKinsey data, nearly 60% of users say they use social tools to find discounts. Almost a quarter say they do this at least once a week. The top reason given for following or liking a brand on social networking sites: to receive discounts and special offers. These results mirror the findings of Yahoo!’s own “The Gamesmanship of Shopping” study. Our researchers found that 49% of consumers give advice to others via social networks, motivated by a feeling of solidarity with other shoppers. Takeaway: One of the best ways for brands to attract followers on social sites is to offer giveaways and discounts.

3. Best geo-location apps with funny names: Booyah, Scvngr, Gowalla and Loopt

According to this new study on social media by Fortune 500, 62% of companies are on Twitter and 58% are active on Facebook. Among the top industries using social to drive business are retail and food. Both are perfect fits for location-based services like Foursquare. But Foursquare isn’t the only name in the geo-location app game. ClickZ says companies like Booyah, Scvngr, Gowalla and Loopt are overhauling their business models to win investors and better compete with Foursquare. Booyah is focusing on social gaming; Gowalla has repositioned to focus on travel; Scvngr looks to incorporate loyalty programs and Loopt is aiming to break into the daily-deals market.

4. Best new social marketing tool on Yahoo!: Social Sentiment Slider

This week, in addition to launching Livestand for iPad, Yahoo! added a "Social Sentiment Slider" to Yahoo! News pages. This social polling feature allows consumers to answer questions related to the content they were just reading. In my case, I was reading an article about Neiman Marcus and was asked, “What is the attraction of luxury goods?" Advertisers can sponsor this social engagement feature, which will also connect to Facebook. This is just one step that Yahoo! is taking toward offering brands more ways to socially engage with readers and be a part of conversations around content online. Stay tuned!

5. Best tweeting advice from Hubspot: The retweeting button is not your friend

The Twitter rule-of-thumb that quickly emerged for me when I started tweeting professionally three years ago: Don’t just hit that retweet button. It may seem super-convenient, but it makes your Twitter stream start reading like one big inbox of forwarded emails. It’s like giving up your feed to other people. Your voice gets lost. That’s why I love this piece from Hubspot on How to Retweet the Right Way, which confirms that it’s better to copy tweets by hand, giving proper attribution and adding your own two cents about the comment or link in question. In social media and in life, the approach that takes a little more time and thought is usually the right choice.

— Dianne Molina

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Yesterday, we offered 13 suggestions for things to include in your holiday search ads. Today, we look at the other side of the coin, and give you seven no-no’s for your creative. This list is courtesy of our Yahoo! search experts, who analyzed and compared historical performance data on holiday season search ads.

Do the following at your own risk, and remember: Santa is watching!

• Unsubstantiated Ad Promotions: Be sure that any sale or percentage discount mentioned in your copy is prominent on the site’s landing page. This will help assure that clicks convert to sales.
• Keyword Scope Mismatch: Diverse offers perform best when paired with general keywords, and while niche offers perform best with keywords that are very specific. Try not to bid on keywords that are too specific or too general for the offer, as they will not be targeted to the interested audience and are less likely to convert to sales.
• Lists: Avoid creatives that are simply a list of products that you offer. Use short sentences and be sure to mention any competitive advantages.
• Unknown Branding: Prominent mention of household brands is usually a plus, but using obscure brand names or non-famous personal names in copy performs more poorly than copy that just focuses on the offer.
• Vague Offering: Avoid copy that is so general, jargon- or slogan-filled that the user can’t determine what you are really offering, or what your advantages are. Focus on how the offer answers the keyword inquiry.
• Unnecessary Info: Do not mention products unrelated to the keyword, as this can confuse users about what is being offered.
• Generic Templates: Avoid copy that is too basic and easily identifiable as a template, especially for shopping comparison sites. Keep specific copy categorized in campaigns with descriptions tailored to the general focus of the keyword, and the shopping season, as well.

For more holiday advertising tips and insights like these, we invite you to view an archived version of our recent webinar, "'Tis The Season to Attract More Shoppers with your Search Ads".

— The Team

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Microsoft’s purchase of Yahoo is gaining momentum again. According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is working with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, to put together a bid to purchase Yahoo.

The proposed deal includes Microsoft paying “several billion dollars,” with Silver Lake and the CPP Investment Board supplying the rest of the equity, all of which is being arranged by unnamed banks.

This is not the only group of investors who are considering a bid for the purchase of Yahoo, according to The Wall Street Journal, which says there are “at least nine private equity firms … studying a potential buyout.”

This latest information comes just a couple of weeks after the news broke that Microsoft might seek a partner for a Yahoo bid. Microsoft appears to want some control over Yahoo’s future, but might be gun shy to go it alone due to its spurned offer for Yahoo in January 2008.

In that deal, Microsoft submitted an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid (equal to $31 per share then) for Yahoo, but the prospective purchase was fended off by Yahoo management, and resulted in the two companies agreeing to a search partnership and the ouster of then-CEO Jerry Yang.

That deal didn’t work out well for Yahoo, either, whose stock price plunged from $29 just before it had refused Microsoft’s offer, down to $15 per share by this September. However, when talks heated up again in early October of this year, Yahoo’s stock started inching upward again.

Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, some private equity firms are saying the deal could be done for between $16 and $18 per share. Yahoo stock closed today at $15.94 per share.

We’ve contacted Microsoft and Yahoo for comment, and will update this post when we get a response.

More About: buyout, microsoft, Silverlake Partners, Yahoo

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Today was my first day attending Ad Week having super delegate access and being treated like a star! The day kicked off for me with a presentation from Facebook on the power of social connections and learning how business is better in a connected world. They led off by announcing Facebook’s recent updates, including the timeline, and referenced users as being a “culture of builders and the timeline being a blank canvas for us to fill out.” I liked this analogy, and found it similar to my own notion of us being architects, in the sense that we’re starting from the ground up and building something based on our own frameworks.

Later I met the one and only Elisa Steele, Yahoo!’s CMO, at the brand-new Yahoo! offices in Times Square. We chatted with Elisa in a very personal setting and gained her perspective on being a woman of power in the industry. Here she is, being in the spotlight where still few women sit as the CMO of a large company. She’s on the woman’s leadership board and speaks at many conferences and on many panels, and I really believe that she wants to serve as a mentor to women who want to succeed and hold a similar position of power. She has long been a fantastic inspiration for me, and it was an honor to meet such a prestigious woman!

We’re now heading off to the Myspace concert and will see where the night takes us. More to come tomorrow from day 2 of Ad Week…

— Natalie Gengaro, Media Planner, OMD Los Angeles

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Media consumption is becoming increasingly fragmented, which means that integration across screens is more important than ever. However, Yahoo! researchers have discovered that most advertisers are still over-spending on traditional media—to the point of inefficiency.

So what’s the right marketing mix across platforms? After the jump, find out how researchers say brands can increase purchase intent and brand favorability by more than 19%.

Yahoo! and Nielsen’s joint study, “Cross-Platform Optimization: Getting to a Smarter Mix”, revealed that shifting overinvested media to two platforms was the optimal smarter mix allocation. Similarly, a study by InsightsExpress reveals that multi-platform exposure benefits both brand favorability and purchase intent. In fact, average brand favorability and purchase intent was highest when consumers were exposed to ads across online, print and TV.

To learn more about optimizing your advertising spend across screens, check out this brand-new Yahoo! video, Retail Smarter Mix.

 —Dianne Molina

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1. Best ambitious new features that have users abuzz: Facebook

This week’s social media spotlight belonged to Facebook and its new feature announcements galore. First, the social network rolled out changes to its news feed on Wednesday, incorporating an algorithm that decides what content is most important to you. Users seemed less than thrilled but that didn’t stop CEO Mark Zuckerberg from announcing much bigger changes coming to Facebook. At the F8 Conference, he walked through the new “Timeline” page that re-imagines profiles into a kind of digital scrapbook, which delves deeper into your personal history and interests. New sharing options via the Facebook Open Graph will help users discover new music, articles and books by seeing what their friends are reading, watching and listening to in real time. Also new: Applications won't have to constantly ask for permission to post content. What will all these changes mean for advertisers? Check out this Forbes article on the opportunities that come with Facebook’s redesign.

2. Best new social way to share what you’re reading: Yahoo! News

This week also marked a new phase in Yahoo!’s relationship with Facebook. Unlike Spotify, which is embedding its content in Facebook, Yahoo! will be exporting the social network’s new social sharing functionality to Yahoo!’s network. What does this mean? Once a user opts into the new feature, she will be able to see what news stories her friends have read on both Facebook and Yahoo! News. This simple two-way stream of information makes it easier to discover news content through your friends. Sigh…I think it also makes it more important that you read more “smart” articles instead of all those, um, lost-cats-finding-their-way-home-against-all-odds stories.

3. Best way not to launch a product: Netflix

In July, Netflix raised the ire of its 25 million customers by abruptly jacking up the price of its DVD plus streaming movies plan by 60%. Then this week, the company issued what seemed like a mea culpa, but was really just an announcement that the company has decided to separate its DVD business. The name of the service is Qwikster and adding insult to injury, it seems that Netflix didn’t secure the Twitter account for its new brand. No, that belongs to a potty-mouthed, pot-smoking dude with poor spelling who wants cash to give up the handle. D’oh. Not a good quarter for the former Silicon Valley darling.

4. Best new political ads to watch: Twitter

The FEC estimates that candidates for the 2008 presidential election spent $1.8 billion on ads. Not surprisingly, Twitter announced this week that it will start accepting political ads. Candidates and their political committees will be able to buy Twitter’s full range of ad products, including Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends. GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was the first to run a Sponsored Tweet. Let the mudslinging tweets begin.

5. Best infographic with global perspective: Mashable

While I’m partial to this week’s Yahoo! Advertising Blog infographic about how social features around content increase engagement, I also love Mashable’s visual snapshot on How the World Uses Social Media. Great perspective for marketers with a global audience.

— Dianne Molina

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After saying she wouldn’t step down from Yahoo’s board of directors, Carol Bartz has resigned from the board.

Bartz’s role as CEO ended abruptly Tuesday when she was ousted from the position she’d held for less than three years. In an interview with Fortune later in the week, she made it clear she intended to stay on the company’s board. In the interview, she called its members “doofuses” and said they “f***ed me over.”

It appears she is no longer among them, though. According to multiple reports, Bartz’s last day on the board was Friday.

[via Bloomberg]

More About: carol bartz, Yahoo

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