The overhaul, which cost an estimated £5 million, is Yahoo! UK and Ireland's first in more than two years. It is part of a total rethink of Yahoo!'s advertising strategy. The portal will offer preferential exclusivity of ad placements to key brands to increase the attraction of running campaigns on the site.
As part of the overhaul, five new advertising formats will be used and only one brand will be allowed to advertise on the homepage at a time.
A handful of preferential advertising partners, which include Ford, HSBC and BA, will be given the opportunity to use the formats, with Yahoo! offering 12 slots per month for other advertisers to buy one of the rich-media executions.
"This is a global initiative with a localised strategy. The advertising market in London is sophisticated and we want to grow advertising revenues by making a more attractive proposition for advertisers," Lindsay Biggart, the marketing director for Yahoo!, said.
In a campaign created, planned and bought by the agency i-traffic, BA is running a full-page peel, where the corner of the Yahoo! UK homepage peels back when a user clicks on it, revealing the airline's price offers as part of its no-frills campaign.
The online execution will run alongside the above-the-line television campaign, created by M&C Saatchi. Media was bought by Optimedia.
Yahoo! undertook a year of consumer research and consulted with agencies including MediaCom, Zenith Media, Carat, MediaVest, Manning Gottlieb OMD and i-level in an attempt to bring more client spend online.
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