Yahoo! Doubles Sales Operations With New Agency Team
Yahoo! UK & Ireland has doubled the size of its UK sales operations with the launch of a strategic agency team that will work to double advertising revenue over the next twelve months.
The company has recruited staff from a number of traditional media companies, including Emap, Viacom and ZenithOptimedia, to create a team that will work to ensure that online advertising continues to be integrated and planned into major brand campaigns.
The new strategic agency team will be headed by Stephen Haines, who joins from Viacom Outdoor. He will assume responsibility for communicating the benefits, to offline agency planners and strategists, of using online in mixed media campaigns.
Richard Stokes joins from Initiative Media as head of sales planning within the strategic agency division. He will lead a team of planners working to sell the Yahoo! audience in the same currency as other media.
The sales team expansion is the result of a six-month consultation period between media agency expert and former sales director at the Daily Star, Chris Marston, and the heads of the top 20 traditional media agencies.
Yahoo! has now separated its UK sales division into a number of core teams, which include strategic agency sales, client sales, online agency sales, planning & strategy and the client services team. The new structure is designed to position Yahoo! alongside traditional media companies rather than its online competitors.
Alison Reay, Yahoo! UK & Ireland’s national sales director, said: “We want our own sales operation to reflect that of traditional media companies by inputting our own strategists into the planning process, especially as we know that online is becoming increasingly important and effective for wider brand campaigns, in addition to traditional direct response.”
She added: “We offer a young very affluent audience who are cash rich and time poor and we know that we provide a unique way for advertisers to reach them. Moving forward we want to be able to talk to our clients about reaching this demographic in ways that are unique to online and to Yahoo!”
The move is supported by recent research from the IAB, which shows that UK online advertising is about the break through the £300 million milestone for the first time. The last twelve months have seen the influx of a number of major brands with Yahoo! booking well over half of the top 100 advertisers (see Figures Show Online Advertising Boom In 2003).
Yahoo! UK & Ireland recently recruited Freeserve’s head of advertising operations, Lisa Mundy, as part of the ongoing expansion of its pan-European sales team. Mundy took up the newly created position of head of European operations with responsibility for ensuring the smooth delivery of campaigns across a range of Yahoo! properties (see Yahoo! Expands Sales Team With More Key Appointments).
Yahoo UK & Ireland: 0207 808 4200 www.yahoo.co.uk
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