Yahoo Reveals SEM of Re-Brand

Near the end of September, Yahoo began a new branding campaign in an effort to re-shape the Internet giant’s image. WebProNews caught up with David Roth, the Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo, to talk about the re-brand and specifically, the paid search element of it.

Roth said the purpose of the new campaign was to re-engage users with Yahoo. The campaign put a new face on Yahoo and gave it a new slogan: “It’s You!” The tagline’s intention is to put a focus on users and show that Yahoo has something for everyone.

Since Yahoo is trying to re-engage its users, Roth saw the need to incorporate paid search techniques. Although people talk constantly about true value lying in branding and awareness, any time a person pays for something, he wants to know what he gets in return. As a result, Roth and his team had to essentially apply revenue by creating metrics for measuring the engagement.

They did this by placing pixels all over the site for things such as pageviews, calls to action, and even hard conversion points like making Yahoo a homepage and downloading the toolbar. In addition, they conducted ad-hoc analysis to look at all the Yahoo data.

Although it has been a challenging process for Yahoo, Roth said it has been a good experience.