Over lunch today, Yahoo’s Ron Belanger told me what Yahoo’s working to develop next: a more off-the-shelf product offering integrating search and display advertising.
Sure, the company’s done this in the past, most conspicuously for the big brand advertisers sponsoring “The Apprentice” and other showcase projects.
But these were special cases, Ron notes. He also lamented that on Yahoo’s side — as with most advertisers — budgets and project management for search and display campaigns remain neatly siloed. Yahoo’s task will initially be to break down those walls internally. They then face the much more daunting task of getting agencies and marketers to do the same.
UPDATE: A Yahoo! spokesperson called to stress what they’re working on internally isn’t a product, per se, but a way to get display and search teams to work more closely to integrate campaigns, both a Yahoo! and ultimately, at agencies.