Need content to advertise on? Yahoo! and GroupM join forces for brand ads

Huge media company GroupM has announced a tie-up with Yahoo! for a big digital advertising push. The deal would see the companies sell branding to be stuck into original video content from Yahoo!

What’s the big deal?

GroupM is part of global advertising powerhouse WPP, and it serves as a parent to numerous smaller media companies that are all part of the WPP family. Maxus, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and MindShare (guess why it’s called GroupM?) all handle a lot of different of digital advertising and marketing styles for their clients. Getting involved with GroupM directly essentially means that the different areas of expertise of any of these companies can be applied to your marketing needs.

And that’s what Yahoo! is adding to its digital branding offer. Yahoo! already has a good few branded channels going for its on-line programming. For example:

Both of the above are branded segments that appear before original video content from Yahoo! online. GroupM and Yahoo! combined will be able combining to create a lot more opportunities like these for large brands that want to get out there. According to the deal, the two companies will “work together to identify advertisers, develop creative concepts that map media content with an advertiser’s messaging, and produce the content for each program.” They are literally talking about creating an entire digital channel specifically to carry branding for a particular company.

From the release:

Peter Tortorici, GroupM Entertainment Worldwide CEO: “Marketers need big, ground-breaking ideas that engage and delight consumers, and this partnership with Yahoo! will enable them to create unique high value relationships.”

Joanne Bradford, Yahoo!’s senior vice president, North American revenue and market development: “Yahoo! has a keen understanding of what makes our audience click, and this partnership will help advertisers develop deeper connections with our users. Furthermore, Yahoo! can continue to build on its successful portfolio of the Internet’s most-watched original programming by tapping into GroupM’s incredible creative development talent.”

What we think?

This is taking it pretty far - it’s not just about matching brand advertising to the most relevant content… it’s about creating content to attach brand advertising to.