Yahoo announces new video programming focus & expanded video ad metrics at NewFronts

With the company’s future on unsteady ground, Yahoo’s 2016 NewFronts event took a sharp turn since last year, only opened to brand partners and advertisers.

In a post from Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Utzschneider published on the company’s blog following its NewFronts presentation, Yahoo said it was “doubling-down” on video programming, narrowing its focus to only four core verticals: news, sports, finance and lifestyle.

“Video advertising is one of the fastest growing areas of our business, up 64 percent in 2015, and our new approach will help amplify this growth,” writes Utzschneider, “Our team produced 54 percent more video in 2015 than in 2014, with over 8,000 video segments coming out of our state-of-the-art studios in Los Angeles, New York and Sunnyvale.”

Also, Yahoo released a separate announcement following the closed-door event, confirming it was expanding its ad viewability capabilities and guaranteeing viewability thresholds around Yahoo Gemini native video.

The expanded video ad metrics will be supported by its partnership with Moat, an advertising analytics platform.

“We are truly excited to expand our partnership with Yahoo to not only measure viewability, but also to measure metrics that go beyond viewability,” says Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart, noting the importance of cross-platform measurement and analytics.

This time last year, Yahoo was announcing 18 new video series at Lincoln Center during the 2015 NewFronts. The company had a star-studded lineup, with Joel McHale as its emcee and appearances from Katie Couric, Simon Cowell and Naomi Campbell.