Yahoo wants visual appeal
2006-11-07 13:22
California - Yahoo this week will expand a test of its mobile telephone advertising network to include more visually appealing messages.
The addition of graphical ads, scheduled to be announced on Tuesday, comes a month after Yahoo began delivering short, written messages to cellphones, relying on some of the same algorithms used by its internet search engine. That, too, is being done on an experimental basis for now.
The Sunnyvale-based company is betting more advertisers will be trying to reach the cellphone market as more people rely on increasingly sophisticated handsets to surf the web, check their e-mail and download media content.
Internet search leader Google Inc, which runs the web's largest ad network, also is gearing up for an aggressive push into the cellphone market.
While Yahoo has a head start in the mobile advertising market, investors have been more disappointed with the company's inability to keep pace with Google on the internet.
Through the first nine months of this year, Google had reeled in a profit of $2.05bn - well ahead of Yahoo's net income of $1.21bn during the same period.
The disparity has contributed to a more than 30% decline in Yahoo's stock price so far this year while Google's market value has climbed by about 15%.
- AP