CEO Marissa Mayer opened Yahoo’s NewFront event last night at Lincoln Center, touting the four biggest areas the company is expanding on: mobile, social, native and video. New offerings include:
- Yahoo Originals on Yahoo Screen: From Michael Tollin (Smallville, Coach Carter) comes the newest NBA team in Last Vegas, the Sin City Saints, in a comedy reality series. Paul Feig (director of Bridesmaids and The Heat) introduced a new comedy sci-fi series called Other Space.
- Yahoo Live: The site announced a partnership with LiveNation for a new concert series, with live and behind-the-scenes footage from musicians and events. “We produce over 20,000 shows a year, and we have spent the last three years talking to distributors, but they never had the same passion as Marissa Mayer did to make this live experience as high quality as we believed it should be,” LiveNation’s CEO Mike Rapino said in a chat with Yahoo CMO Kathy Savitt. Kellogg’s is the main sponsor.
- Yahoo! News with Katie Couric: New series called World 3.0 and Now I Get It
- Yahoo Beauty: L’Oreal is a launch partner for this vertical.
- Yahoo Travel: The site’s newest vertical, led by Paula Froelich, debuted a digital travel mag during the NewFront, along with an original video series.
Yahoo Advertising: Head of the Americas Ned Brody Yahoo highlighted Yahoo’s SmartTV platform, along with Yahoo Splash Ads, Yahoo Full Page Video Login Ads and its new ComScore partnership. Kraft Foods’ Jane Hilk provided a testimonial on the Planters’ Power of the Peanut video and display campaign with Yahoo, which resulted in a 4% in-store sales lift.