Kia “Hotbots” Captivate Players with Personalized Bracket Updates and Messages Using Yahoo! Smart Ads

Kicking off with the 2013 NCAA Men’s Division Basketball Championships (aka March Madness), Kia launched a unique campaign to generate excitement for its new 2014 Kia Forte on Yahoo! Sports. The starting lineup for Kia includes Yahoo! Smart Ads to deliver personalized ads to each player on Yahoo! Sports’ Tourney Pick’em fantasy basketball site.

Check out this demo video for a look at how Kia is reaching this passionate audience and building enthusiasm for the new Kia Forte by engaging users with personalized ads to drive results.

When chocolate collided with peanut butter, a legendary ad was born.

This week’s Ad Land cartoon pays homage to some classic advertising that anyone over age 30 should appreciate.

Remember those long-running commercials that celebrated the serendipitous smash-up of chocolate and peanut butter that inspired the creation of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? (Okay, the candy was actually invented in 1928 by former Hershey’s employee H.B. Reese in the basement of his home, but we like the ad version better.)

Those candy collisions are more than great ads to David. They remind us that the creative process often involves happy accidents that lead to great ideas, he says. In fact, those Reese’s ads inspired many jokes and spinoffs, like this demented take from “Family Guy.”

So the moral of this week’s Ad Land is, when it comes to creativity, it doesn’t pay to be too careful. In that spirit, take a blind, wild jump and check out the full cartoon.

The relief of winning, quality networking at Cannes Lions, and the lasting fame of a funny entry video

With this week’s launch of a new Yahoo! Young Media Stars competition, we wondered what last year’s two winners were doing and how becoming a Young Media Star has affected their lives. Yesterday we heard from Marisa Wong of 360i. Today we’re talking with Mike Murphy of Adap.tv (who was with Digitas in Chicago when he won the award). Big Mike made a huge impression on the judges, who clicked with his drive, love of the industry, and his hilarious video that portrayed him as the “Most Interesting Media Planner in the World.”

Yahoo! Ad Blog: What was your reaction when you learned that you’d been chosen as a Yahoo! Young Media Star?

Mike Murphy: Where is my passport? Can I go to France now? But seriously, I was relieved. After all the work my friends and family did to help me with my entry, and me annoying every single person I’ve come across in my life to vote for my video every day, it was a huge relief to see it all pay off. I was very grateful.

YAB: How has becoming a Young Media Star affected your career?

MM: I get recognized for my video from time to time. It can be awkward when you get in an elevator and a stranger starts staring at you and says, “Are you that Yahoo guy? The Dos Equis one? I voted for you!”

YAB: What’s the best career insight that you’ve brought back from Cannes?

MM: I learned that this industry is always evolving, and to stay relevant we need to be knowledgeable about all of the innovations and new technologies that continue to emerge in digital advertising.

YAB: What’s the Cannes experience that no Young Media Star should miss?

MM: Don’t miss the networking opportunity that you have in Cannes. All the biggest names in our industry are there, and you have a very unique opportunity to introduce yourself, ask questions, and pick people’s brains.

April 8 is the deadline to upload your hoops-themed photos to our contest Flickr page for a chance to win a great Canon camera

As the Men’s College Basketball Championship tournament enters its last five games, we offer condolences to our ad agency friends whose brackets have busted in our Agency Pick ‘Em hoops fantasy competition. The good news is, you can still compete with your Josh Yang, Bridget Chang, and Reggie Miller at a UCLA gamead industry colleagues before the madness ends on April 8 by entering the Agency Pick ‘Em Tourney Flickr Photo Contest.

All you have to do is upload your hoops-themed photos to our Agency Pick ‘Em Flickr group by April 8. (This contest is open to ad agencies only.) Any photo with a hoops flavor has a chance to win our prize of a Canon EOS Rebel T3i DSLR camera.

So far, entries have ranged from a baby wearing a Wisconsin cheerleading outfit to a father-and-son reunion at a Georgetown game to this recent submission (right) by Bridget Chang, a Senior Ad Ops Associate at Universal McCann and diehard UCLA fan.

Bridget attended UCLA from 2004 to 2008, when the Bruins made it to the Final Four three straight years. In her senior year, she was sitting in the student section and heard that former UCLA star Reggie Miller was at the game.

The shock of winning, lessons learned at Cannes, and sipping champagne with the industry elite on the Cote D’Azur

With a new Yahoo! Young Media Stars competition kicking off this week, it’s a perfect time to check in with last year’s two honorees to see what they’re up to and find out how becoming a Young Media Star has impacted their careers. Today we’re talking to Marisa Wong of 306i in New York, who wowed the judges with her smarts, skills, and awesome rap video.

Yahoo! Ad Blog: What was your reaction when you learned that you’d been chosen as a Yahoo! Young Media Star?

Marisa Wong: Complete disbelief. When it finally sank in, I was extremely excited, because it’s a huge honor and so many co-workers had supported me. I ran around the office thanking people for all their help.

YAB: How has becoming a Young Media Star affected your career?

MW: I received a huge amount of exposure during and immediately after the contest. Even now, people remember me from my contest entry video. In an industry this big, it’s nice to have something unique that people remember you by, even if it is kind of silly.

YAB: What’s the best career insight that you’ve brought back from Cannes?

MW: I learned about the importance of designing and packaging your ideas more effectively, whether it’s an email to your internal team or a presentation to your client or even a whole ad campaign. The way the idea is packaged can really make a difference in how it’s received.

Online retail sales are projected to reach $262 billion this year. Our April 30 webinar shares proven tips to help your retail ads attract more searchers.

Online retail sales in the U.S. are growing at a record pace, according to a recent Forrester study*, and is expected to hit $262 billion, a 13% jump over 2012. To help your SEM campaigns get a bigger slice of the retail pie, register now for our free April 30 webinar, where our retail search experts will share three key ways to capture more sales on the Yahoo! Bing Network and improve your ROI too.

At the webinar, you’ll learn how to:

• Leverage search ad performance trends to better understand when and how to attract more searchers.
• Use ad formats designed to increase engagement, including options to help searchers find you (Location Extensions), contact you (Call Extensions), and learn more about you (Sitelink Extensions and Rich Ads in Search).
• Capture the growing number of smartphone and tablet shoppers with best practices to help you better target and maximize your mobile search campaigns.

Enter now for the chance to win industry recognition and a trip to Cannes Lions in June

Today marks the opening of the third Yahoo! Young Media Stars competition, which honors outstanding up-and-coming professionals in the digital media industry. Three winners will be chosen for this once-in-a-lifetime experience to gain industry recognition and be our guests at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity for four days of learning, networking, and fun in June. Enter now!

Celebrating its 60^th anniversary, Cannes Lions is one of advertising’s elite events and brings together the top creative minds from around the world. At Cannes, our three Young Media Stars will attend educational sessions, network with Yahoo! executives and industry leaders, and wine and dine in style on the famed Cote d’Azur.

To enter, go to our online registration page and answer a few short questions on the application to show what makes you a Young Media Star. Applications will be judged on their originality, creativity, persuasiveness, and industry knowledge. For extra points, you can create a short video of yourself (no more than 90 seconds) via Flickr, which will be posted to the Yahoo! Advertising Facebook Page on a special tab dedicated to Yahoo! Young Media Stars 2013. We’ll award five bonus points to the video that best demonstrates originality and creativity, and five bonus points to the video that receives the highest number of “votes” on our Young Media Stars Facebook page. For rules, FAQs, and tips for entering, visit the registration page. To see what it takes to win, check out videos from last year’s Yahoo! Young Media Stars, Marisa Wong and Mike Murphy.

Online travel sales are projected to grow 9% this year. Check out our webinar for tips on how to make your search ads work harder and smarter.

There’s no time for R&R in the online travel marketing space. A record $103 billion was booked in online travel last year, and that’s expected to grow by 9% in 2013.[1]

Search plays a critical role in getting travelers on the road, with 83% of leisure travelers[2] using it to plan flights, hotel stays, and more. In this competitive marketplace, your travel search ads may need to work harder than ever.

Luckily, we can help. Grab your beach chair and an umbrella drink, and catch a replay of our recent webinar, “Pack Your Travel Search Ads with Success,” for insights and tips to send your travel SEM campaigns to marketing paradise.

Maximize search ad volume on the Yahoo! Bing Network

Projections based on Yahoo! and Microsoft internal data forecast major year-over-year growth for online travel search activity on the Yahoo! Bing Network:

• Travel search ad clicks to grow 23%
• CTR is projected to grow 21%
• Travel search ad spend to grow 27%

To take advantage of the growth in travel searches, the webinar offered specific recommendations to help ensure that your ads get served to as many relevant searchers as possible: