Dive Brief:
- Yahoo is partnering with e-commerce platform MikMak to offer add-to-cart functionality and analytics for advertising campaigns on its properties, including Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch and AOL, according to an announcement.
- CPG advertisers can now offer consumers a multi-retailer checkout experience directly from their ads on Yahoo, allowing website users to buy from their preferred source. The deal also gives brands access to MikMak Insights to assess the effectiveness of their ad campaigns through metrics like add-to-cart rate, retailer sales, product interest and category benchmarks. The insights give brands access to increasingly valuable first-party data on shoppers' demographic, psychographic and behavioral information that can inform future marketing efforts.
- Yahoo's partnership aligns with the recent uptick in publishers looking to integrate more shopping capabilities into their properties as consumer habits shift online and e-commerce opens revenue opportunities outside of display advertising.
Dive Insight:
Yahoo's deal with MikMak sees the media company building out its advertising offerings with shoppable capabilities that are becoming increasingly popular. The move comes amid a surge in retail media advertising, which eMarketer forecasts will grow 31.4% to $41.37 billion in 2022.
The partnership complements past investments in the e-commerce space by Yahoo, which for years has worked to make its content and platforms more shoppable to lower user friction and establish new revenue streams. In 2021, it teamed with Shopify and debuted its In The Know Style shopping network, a fashion and beauty vertical featuring original shoppable content geared toward Gen Z and millennials. A year prior, Yahoo added a Walmart-linked shopping feature to its Yahoo Mail site. The company also plans to launch a combination marketplace and advertising solution called Yahoo Shops to connect brands with consumers and streamline the online shopping experience.
Beyond more directly connecting ad content with commerce, the new MikMak tie-up provides CPG advertisers with analytics and data metrics that can help to inform their future marketing efforts.
"As the e-commerce space continues to see significant growth, it's important for brands to reach their target audiences, wherever they are," Adam Russack, MikMak's director of partnerships said in the announcement.
