Connect with Yahoo! at the world’s largest tech tradeshow

For a few days this week, what happens in Vegas, won’t stay in Vegas. Hundreds of thousands of gearheads are descending on Las Vegas for the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s largest consumer technology event. And tech junkies around the globe will be watching with bated breath for announcements on the newest gadgets and hottest technologies for 2011. Early word on the street: tablets, Android and connected TV will be the buzz at this year’s event.

Yahoo! at CES
Yahoo! plans to hit The Strip with exciting news of our own.

A comic look ahead at the industry over the next year

Return of semaphore?

In an escalating attempt to grab the eyes of attention-deficient customers online, online banner ads are replaced by actual banners. (From @40licious via Twitter.)

Dancing with the Cars

With an American Idol ratings disaster due to the departure of everyone but Randy "Dawg" Jackson, Ford takes its sponsorship away and launches its own celebrity/reality show, "Dancing with the Cars." (From @anneweiskopf via Twitter.)

If you can’t beat ’em…

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is promoted to social media strategist for the U.S. Department of Defense. (From @Jonathan_Poston via Twitter.)

GoDaddy.com beats “wardrobe malfunction”

Frustrated by the annual rejection of its racy Super Bowl ads, GoDaddy.com takes a page from college bowl games and buys the title sponsorship of the Big Game. “The Super Bowl, presented by GoDaddy.com” features Danica Patrick driving her racecar to the 50-yardline to deliver the game ball, scantily clad models handling the coin toss, and Fox announcer Joe Buck being forced to work in awkward double-entendres about “scoring.” TV ratings are the highest of all time.

Old spice guy gets “Smell Like a Man” reality show

Isaiah Mustafa, known by fainting consumer-ettes everywhere as “the Old Spice Guy,” teams up with suspected paramour and “Scream” star Neve Campbell for the new reality-based series “Smell like a Man.” Stranded on a desert island, Campbell fends off competing suitors for Mustafa’s affections, including Kim Kardashian, Snooki and Bristol Palin. In between, Mustafa will try to survive in the island’s jungle using his signature “silver fish hand catch.”

If you haven’t already, transition your Yahoo! Search Marketing account before it’s too late

While most Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers moved their accounts to Microsoft adCenter before the ad serving transition was completed in October, there are still a small number who have not. If you are part of this group, please take note: The transition tool inside your YSM account will permanently close on January 5, 2011. Accounts that are not transitioned by January 5 can only be manually transitioned by exporting and importing campaigns into the adCenter UI.

So, how can you check to make sure you transitioned? If you have an “adCenter” tab with a yellow “Get Started” button in your account after you log in, you did not transition that account.

Meet a curator of cultural context (and hot dog prognosticator)

After a decade of drama during which Generation Y grew through key lifestages and life-changing world events, we think it’s time for an updated memo on this demo. And who better for this task than trend tracker Jane Buckingham, who’s been keeping tabs on youth culture since millennials were optimistic, overscheduled tweens with unlimited allowances?

For the past 15 years, Buckingham has schooled brands on the ABCs of cool while preaching the need to understand the deeper, different drivers for generations X, Y and Z.  She founded The Intelligence Group (since sold to talent firm CAA) and is now President of Trendera, a New York marketing/ consulting firm. Trendera issues monthly and seasonal reports to update Fortune 500 clients on what’s shaping young people today and why.

Buckingham’s infinite hyphenates include teen author-TV host-mom-philanthropist-marketer-manager-all around go to gal. Not the least of her accomplishments: making these achievements look manageable and by no means a motive for justifiable homicide by uni-tasker pals like Becky Ebenkamp, who interviews her below.

Yahoo! Advertising Blog: Let’s talk technology. What’s on your radar right now, Jane?

Jane Buckingham: Technology is all about moving to the cloud. That’s not only a tech phenomenon, but also a generational one, I think. We’re moving toward a generation that’s just so comfortable with lack of permanence. Gen X felt ripped off as things got taken away from them… They like to own things and know where their stuff is, they buy houses. Gen Y is the disposable culture: They switch their handbags, they’re nomads, they move from place to place. They are happy streaming music and playing games online. They’re comfortable with virtual goods, so for them, it’s totally fine to have everything in a cloud where the technology grows and grows---it doesn’t have to live on your desktop. I think we’ll definitely see a shift to that.

YAB: Your latest Trendera report includes a “Redefining Gen Y” chapter. Demographers gave us dossiers on these kids before “life” happened...

A little holiday cheer from Old St. Nick and Coca-Cola

Following on last week’s popular “Ad of the Week” post featuring Santa Claus, a magic snow globe and music by Train, Coca-Cola has gone one better. They’ve commandeered the Yahoo! Login page, combining the expansive canvas with video to create a festive holiday experience for 26 million daily login page users. See below and check it out. (It’s live now but it won’t be for long.)

Science + art + scale---plus a little magic.

--- Michael Mattis

Holiday time is break time

This post marks our 627^th since we started posting on September 21, 2009. Remember the classic McDonald’s jingle, “You Deserve a Break Today?” Well, we’re going to be taking a little break, too.

Between Friday, December 24 and Monday, January 3, your Yahoo! Advertising Blog correspondents will be catching up with family and friends, reading pulp fiction, watching bowl games, taking long baths and otherwise knocking off. (Though you might see a post or a tweet or two if the fancy strikes us.)

In fact, most of Yahoo! will do the same, except of course our redoubtable engineers and technicians who keep the Babbage engines a-cranking.

We’d like to wish all of our readers a very happy holiday, and a wonderful and prosperous new year---and in 2011 we’ll be working hard to help make your advertising goals come true.

--- Jeff Sweat, Jeff Hecox, Michael Mattis, Dianne Molina and Becky Ebenkamp

Beyond the banner? The best ads redefine the Web page

There has been a lot of talk about going beyond the banner in online advertising this year---and our Top Ten ads for 2010 show that not only are we moving beyond the banner, we’re also leaving behind the constraints of the Web page itself.

In our team’s picks for the best ads on Yahoo! this year, ads exploded from their niche on the side of the page. Bugs walked on to the Yahoo! front page, and the pages themselves folded, tore and crumpled. Banners turned into magazines and catalogs where people could buy stuff.

Entertainment ads made the best use of our canvas this year, but more traditional brands did great stuff, too. Below are our top ten ads for 2010, in no particular order. (They’re all first place in awesomeness, though.)

Yahoo! Frontpage VP on targeting, the custom experience, Jerry Garcia and more

Did you know that the first non-directory content on the Yahoo! frontpage appeared in 1995 following the passing of “Grateful Dead” star Jerry Garcia? Or that “The Office” star Rainn Wilson once tweeted, “If it ain’t on the Yahoo! homepage, it ain’t worth knowing about?” Or that men really do click on links about women’s shoes, despite what they tell the pollsters?

These are just a few of the Yahoo! frontpage fun facts that Yahoo!’s VP of Frontpage Programming Liz Lufkin offers in this quick video. She also highlights Yahoo!’s optimization technology, targeting capabilities and the Yahoo! Today module.

See all the Yahoo! Expert Videos at Yahoo! Advertising Solutions.

--- The Team