Yahoo Announces Acquisition of Instagram Co-Founder’s AI News Platform Artifact
Yahoo has revealed that it has acquired Artifact, an AI-powered news aggregation and discovery platform. Artifact, which was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, co-founders of Instagram, uses technology to provide highly customized news experiences. The exclusive AI-powered personalization technology and other features of Artifact will soon be integrated throughout Yahoo, including the Yahoo News App. Artifact will no longer be available as a stand-alone app. Given the size of the Yahoo News Network, which is projected to be the top news and information property in the US by 2023, the technology Artifact has developed will have an even greater influence.
Artifact – the AI News Aggregation and Digital Platform
Following the announcement by Artifact CEO Kevin Systrom in January 2024 that the app would be shut down, this acquisition has taken place. With the potential for improved scalability and audience-specific content delivery, Yahoo, the parent company of well-known news sites like TechCrunch, Engadget, and Yahoo Finance, sees Artifact’s AI-powered recommendation engine as a valuable addition to its news operations.
Artifact’s trouble with market foothold
When Artifact was introduced a year earlier, it was praised for its creativity and design, but it had trouble breaking through the market. Additionally, this acquisition illustrates the continued difficulties media startups face in making money, especially considering the dominance of advertising sales by tech behemoths like Meta Platforms and Alphabet. Furthermore, Yahoo owns a small portion of the Taboola content recommendation platform. Yahoo did not release the acquisition’s financial details. In 2021, Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, paid $5 billion to acquire Yahoo.
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Yahoo acquires Artifact
Artifact’s goal was to deliver the most relevant stories to users via AI, using proprietary technology to provide curated news and content experiences. Yahoo serves as a reliable resource for consumers looking to accomplish online objectives, such as finding and connecting with high-quality content that interests them. This investment accelerates Yahoo’s vision to provide a more personalized news and information discovery experience across platforms and strengthens Yahoo’s commitment to providing reliable news and information to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
Artifact’s AI-powered engine
With time, Artifact’s AI-powered discovery engine learns what interests users and presents the content they want to see most. The outcome is a highly successful personalized news feed that assists users in finding stories they are interested in reading. Apart from curation, Artifact offers an array of functionalities designed to enhance the user experience, such as effortless access to the most recent news, the ability to share links, instruments to stop the spread of clickbait, and more. By adding these features to the Yahoo portfolio, the chance to provide users with even more personalized and richer content experiences is accelerated. Yahoo’s large user base should enjoy a more dynamic and personalized news experience as a result of this integration. The purchase was finalized on March 29, 2024. Over the transition, Systrom and Kreiger will continue to serve as advisors to Yahoo.
Here’s what they said
Kat Downs Mulder, SVP and General Manager of Yahoo News said
“Yahoo was one of the first to combine human and algorithmic curation of news. Since then, the landscape of machine learning and personalization has changed dramatically and Artifact has innovated with best-in-class technology to meet the moment. Artifact has become a beloved product and we’re thrilled to be able to continue to grow that technology and further our mission of becoming the trusted guide to digital information and the best curator connecting people to the content that matters most to them.”
Kevin Systrom, CEO and Co-Founder of Artifact stated,
“We built an intuitive product experience that users love and has the opportunity to benefit millions of people. Yahoo brings the scale to help the product achieve what we envisioned while upholding the belief that connecting people to the trusted sources of news and information is as critical as ever. AI has allowed us to give users a better experience discovering great content they care about. Yahoo recognizes that opportunity, and we could not be more excited to see what we’ve built live on through Yahoo News.”
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Yahoo and LiveRamp Expand Partnership, Scaling Addressability
Yahoo and LiveRamp, a top data cooperation platform that connects data from many platforms, including DSPs and DMPs, while focusing on identity resolution and data onboarding, have announced an expanded partnership. The collaboration will increase reach and interoperability throughout the advertising ecosystem while scaling addressability. Additionally, it will make addressable inventory more widely accessible. With the help of this partnership, publishers employing LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) will be able to benefit from Yahoo ConnectID‘s cookie-free identity solution and open up new addressable demand.
Brands can leverage Yahoo ConnectID for addressable inventory
Through Yahoo ConnectID, which gains from RampID and the enhanced scale of LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, brands who use the Yahoo DSP can expand their reach. 30,000 publishers have embraced Yahoo ConnectID, which has been connected to more than 30 of the largest industry data platforms. It is supported by direct consumer relationships with approximately 200 million authenticated users in the U.S. Additionally, it will make all Yahoo-owned-and-operated properties’ addressable inventory available across all channels. RampID and LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution enable authenticated addressability across browsers, mobile devices, and CTV, at scale over hundreds of destinations, and power LiveRamp’s person-based approach to identity.
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Publishers benefits
Without requiring any additional configuration or resources for authorized viewers at scale, publishers and advertisers may profit from this relationship. Additionally, it will deliver personalized experiences wherever they matter. As Yahoo ConnectID will now be available as an identifier, publishers should anticipate experiencing improved monetization on their authenticated inventory via ATS. Additionally, through the Yahoo DSP, marketers seeking post-signal loss solutions will have greater access to authenticated customers across publishers who have embraced RampID and/or Yahoo ConnectID. Clients will be able to maintain data control, forge closer connections with their customers, and add value throughout the customer journey. More than 450 brands now use LiveRamp to customize consumer experiences using their first-party data.
Here’s what they said
Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer at Yahoo said,
We strongly believe in authenticated addressability, and this partnership enables greater reach that will endure beyond third-party signal loss. We’re making it easier for marketers and publishers to leverage these solutions and maximize results, while simultaneously supporting more seamless transactions across the open web.
Travis Clinger, SVP, Activations, and Addressability, LiveRamp commented,
Yahoo is a powerful advocate for authenticated identity, and the connectivity we’re partnering to enable across their DSP and Yahoo ConnectID will help make the post-signal world a better experience for marketers than the world of today. Marketers and publishers now have even more flexibility to engage, personalize, and measure their customer journey.
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Yahoo Partners with Amplified Intelligence for Attention Measurement
Following a significant novel agreement between Yahoo and Amplified Intelligence, advertisers will be able to measure attention across their programmatic advertising buys for the first time. Due to the market-first relationship, advertisers in Australia using Yahoo’s Demand-Side Platform (DSP) will now have access to the attentionPROVE measuring tool from Amplified Intelligence. As a result of the new partnership, advertisers will have access to attentionPROVE, which will allow them to assess the success of their attention targeting within programmatic purchasing.
AttentionPROVE – the attention measurement solution
Amplified Intelligence is an Australian business that leads the world in attention measurement. The attentionPROVE solution gives agencies and brands the ability to continuously improve impact, performance, and cost-effectiveness. It is based on the biggest real-human dataset in the world. The solution made up of more than 100K unique individuals and producing more than 400 million data points, uses active and passive human attention seconds, revolutionizing how they are carried out and evaluated. For advertisers using the Yahoo DSP, this new relationship is anticipated to significantly increase the efficacy of attention planning.
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Why did Yahoo choose to partner with Amplified Intelligence?
Yahoo provides omnichannel services for advertisers via its well-known products. It acts as a trusted resource for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Brands and agencies may benefit from more effective and profitable advertising campaigns. This is thanks to Amplified Intelligence, a world leader in assessing online human attention. It keeps transforming the media trade to put a strong emphasis on attention, placing it as the most important metric for determining if an advertisement is successful. A fresh phase of insight-driven programmatic buying and selling is now being ushered in by the new capability, which is already rolling out across the Yahoo DSP. The CTV supply paths would be made simpler by the Yahoo Backstage system, increasing revenue for publishers and advertisers. Additionally, it strives to lower carbon emissions by minimizing the amount of data transferred between various SSPs.
Here’s what they said
Andrew Gilbert, Director of Platforms AUSEA at Yahoo said,
Attention has rapidly become a vital component of the media planning ecosystem, and this partnership is a major milestone in advancing its use. All of the major holding groups in Australia use Amplified Intelligence’s data as part of their planning process. Adding programmatic measurement creates a significant opportunity for them to move past just high-level planning and get deeper insights into their programmatic investment across desktop, mobile, tablet, and Connected TV.
Dr Karen Nelson-Field, Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence added,
Attention is now widely accepted as a crucial part of any media buy and this integration is going to be a huge boost for our partners. Now brands can get real-time human attention insights from their campaigns which in turn will help them optimise for better outcomes. Yahoo’s expertise in programmatic will help Amplified Intelligence’s partners to track attention effectively, which is very exciting for us.
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Taboola and Yahoo Partner for Native Ads Worldwide
Taboola, the leader in enabling proposals for the open web, revealed that its advertiser clients can now begin running native ads on Yahoo’s top digital properties worldwide. Taboola’s advertising platform will make this possible in more than a dozen markets around the world. With Taboola’s assistance, advertisers can now access Yahoo‘s extensive portfolio of websites, including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Sports. Globally, they can access hundreds of millions of active users each month. Additionally, advertisers can run campaigns in conjunction with Yahoo’s dependable editorial environments and well-liked email platforms on desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps. Taboola projects $1 billion in annual revenue from the partnership.
A Significant Milestone
The information represents a crucial turning point in Taboola’s already declared 30-year strategic alliance with Yahoo. Additionally, it establishes Taboola as the sole provider of native advertising across all of Yahoo’s digital sites that may be purchased through the Yahoo DSP. In addition, Yahoo will keep several managed clients who purchase native ads on its owned and operated websites. Future cooperation milestones will center on technical and data connections made to give advertisers new ways to identify, target, and engage audiences more accurately.
Partnership benefits
The Independent, BBC, CNBC, and CBSi are among Taboola’s publisher partners. Combined with them, the collaboration with Yahoo gives businesses enormous reach to hundreds of millions of customers globally. Both businesses have been focusing on technology integration since January. It has been introduced in a few international areas to advertisers’ satisfaction. Advertising can be purchased on the Taboola network and Yahoo thanks to the supply being fully accessible worldwide, including in the United States.
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Potential challenges
The ability to service a huge volume of new advertisers and greatly increase size, according to Taboola, was the largest challenge. The statement went on to say that establishing seamless integration was the toughest hurdle.
Here’s what they said
Adam Singolda, CEO of Taboola said,
We’ve seen great results for advertisers on Yahoo’s international markets, and I’m excited to share that we’re taking a meaningful step forward to make Yahoo now available globally. With Yahoo, we’re supercharging advertisers’ ability to connect with millions of consumers around the world each day. This adds significantly to Taboola’s existing worldwide footprint and gives advertisers greater reach, better campaign performance, and a strong local team that can support advertiser success.
Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer at Yahoo added,
We are excited about this next phase in our strategic partnership with Taboola. This collaboration sets us apart in the market, helping us drive long-term growth in native advertising while enhancing the experiences of users, advertisers, and publishers.
About Taboola
Taboola powers predictions for the public internet, assisting users in finding content they would enjoy. Digital properties, including websites, gadgets, and mobile apps, leverage the company’s platform. It is AI-powered, to increase user engagement and revenue. With some of the top digital publications in the world, such as CNBC, BBC, NBC News, Business Insider, The Independent, and El Mundo, Taboola has long-standing agreements. More than 15,000 advertisers use Taboola to reach more than 600 million active users every day in a setting that protects their brands. Taboola is a market leader in e-commerce suggestions after acquiring Connexity in 2021, fueling more than 1 million monthly transactions. Key clients include well-known companies like Walmart, Macy’s, Skechers, and eBay.
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Yahoo Spins Out its Enterprise Engine Vespa for AI-Scaling Excellence
Yahoo announced the spin-out of Vespa, its enterprise AI-scaling engine to increase the reach of its technology platform. Vespa, which makes extensive use of data and AI online, will be a distinct and independent company. Since 2017, Vespa, a division of Yahoo, has served a range of external clients’ AI requirements, including Spotify, Wix, major financial institutions, and others. Searching through millions of documents inside a large enterprise, providing superior data-driven online services, or enabling scalable AI-based language apps are a few examples. 150 essential applications that are crucial to the business’s operations are supported by Vespa technology. These programs are necessary for real-time content personalization across all of Yahoo’s pages and for managing targeted advertising inside one of the world’s biggest advert exchanges.
What is Vespa?
In 1997, Vespa debuted as a cutting-edge search engine. Later, as a result of the Overture acquisition in 2003, it joined Yahoo. Vespa went open-source in 2017 and started providing services to outside customers in 2021. Through the spin-out, Yahoo will have a share in the new company and a director seat on its board.
Vespa – Yahoo’s spin-out
The spin-out intends to increase Vespa’s technology platform’s usability at a time when retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) requires the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) processing. With around 150 technology apps supporting close to one billion users, Yahoo will continue to be Vespa’s top customer and strategic investor. These programs process 800,000 inquiries every second, which is astounding. Vespa will also keep powering Yahoo’s internal solutions for search, dynamic recommendations, and providing users with targeted adverts and content.
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Benefits of entity spin-out
Vespa will be able to benefit the rest of the globe greatly if a corporation is built around it. Additionally, it will enable businesses already reliant on Vespa to take advantage of cloud service efficiencies. More businesses will use it to solve online AI and big data concerns. Vespa will be able to quicken the creation of new features, enabling its users to produce even better solutions more quickly and inexpensively. Deploying on a cloud service or keeping with an open-source distribution are both possible options.
Thanks to its decade-long work on fusing AI and large data online, Vespa delivers features and scale that exceed any comparable solution. The demand for a platform that offers a solid basis for these solutions has never been greater as the world begins to use current AI to solve actual business problems online.
Here’s what they said
Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo said,
Vespa has been a critical component to Yahoo’s AI and machine-learning capabilities across all of our properties for many years. While remaining Vespa’s biggest customer and a key investor, we’ll continue to leverage all that Vespa has to offer while simultaneously creating a new business opportunity that allows other companies to harness its technology as an independent entity.
Jon Bratseth, CEO of Vespa added,
Given Yahoo’s incubation and advancement of the technology over the years, now is the time to spin out Vespa and allow other companies to take advantage of Vespa Cloud in a meaningful way. With Yahoo’s continued investment and support, Vespa will be able to maintain its position as one of the largest and most sophisticated machine learning and database management platforms globally.
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Yahoo Launches Cookieless ID Targeting Solutions for the Open Web
Knock Knock.
Who’s there?
Ya.
Ya who?
Yahoo recently launched an ID-free targeting solution.
Yahoo has its own ID, which it refers to as the Yahoo ConnectID. According to Yahoo, 30 percent of ad impressions have no advertising ID now, and more than 75 percent of impressions will have no ID in two years.
Next-Gen Solutions, Yahoo’s first zero-ID solution, simulates logged-in users who can be monitored on Yahoo-owned online domains such as Yahoo Fantasy Sports, TechCrunch, and AOL Mail. Yahoo says that Next-Gen Solutions also decodes the content on a website and pulls in enhanced contextual information. Yahoo then creates audiences based on bidstream data signals such as weather and device type.
Interesting Read: Buzzfeed Integrates Yahoo’s Alternative To Third-Party Cookies
Yahoo can now give crucial insights on numerous actions, including the CPM difference between addressable and non-addressable inventory, according to James Kanak, OMD’s associate director of digital activation. Kanak also added that –
Advertisers need solutions that help them reach and gain insights into non-addressable environments.
Buzzfeed Integrates Yahoo’s Alternative To Third-Party Cookies
The second phase of Yahoo and BuzzFeed’s strategic relationship was unveiled recently. This phase focuses on expanding addressable audience pools, which will provide advertisers with the scale they need as the usage of third-party cookies decreases, resulting in more programmatic advertising revenue.
Advertisers that use Yahoo’s supply-side platform will get priority access to BuzzFeed’s network of sites, which includes BuzzFeed News, Tasty, HuffPost, and others.
According to Iván Markman, Yahoo’s chief business officer, BuzzFeed will integrate Yahoo’s identity tech products, ConnectID, and Next-Gen Solutions, combining its first-party data with Yahoo’s to generate an addressable audience of over 148 million individuals.
Markman added –
“We need to have solutions for publishers with first-party data and those without first-party data. And because we treasure our consumers, in order to do that we need to have a community garden, as opposed to a walled garden, where we partner with like-minded publishers to help all of us grow.”
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The agreement will assist both publishers to expand their advertising and data functionality, as well as boost audience scale, ahead of the looming deprecation of third-party cookies.
According to Ken Blom, SVP of ad strategy and partnerships at BuzzFeed, by giving preferential programmatic access to advertisers leveraging Yahoo’s SSP, BuzzFeed intends to enhance demand for its inventory and create greater ad revenues.
Preferred access allows BuzzFeed to establish arrangements with advertisers that use the platform ahead of time, such as ensuring them access to certain audience groups. This ensures that advertisers achieve their goals at scale, while BuzzFeed has access to the most diverse demand conceivable.
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