“Yahoo Recommends” Brings Stream Ads To Third-Party Sites

Yahoo’s native “Stream ads” are now appearing on other publisher sites via a content recommendation engine that incorporates sponsored posts.

Unlike other recommendation engines like Outbrain, which also promote content on other sites, the product, dubbed Yahoo Recommends, only promotes content on the publisher’s own site along with Yahoo’s stream ads. Publishers receive a cut of the click-revenue on those ads, similar to other ad network arrangements, according to AdAge.

This marks Yahoo’s first effort to extend the reach of its Stream ads beyond its own properties. Participating publishers include CBS Interactive’s GameSpot and TV Guide and Vox Media’s SB Nation.

The recommendations are supposedly personalized: if a user is signed-in to a Yahoo account, the “Powered by Yahoo! for” tag features the user’s first name, otherwise it says “Powered by Yahoo! for you”. The product appears on both desktop and mobile devices.

The next frontier for Yahoo Stream Ads is likely mobile apps. In July, the company announced it was acquiring mobile ad network and analytics platform, Flurry. At the time of the announcement, Flurry had 8,000 publishers/third-party app developers on its ad network and 170,000 developers using its analytics solution.

Tapping into Flurry’s reach and targeting capabilities for Stream Ads could help Yahoo distinguish itself from Google (AdMob), Facebook and Twitter’s (MoPub) mobile ad network and exchange capabilities and inject some life into its waning ad sales.

Update: Yahoo officially announced the release of Yahoo Recommends on September 8. The product is available in multiple shapes and sizes for various site layouts on mobile and desktop. Ads are served through Yahoo Gemini, the company’s mobile search and native ad marketplace.