Behavioral ad targeting may be getting the evil eye from regulators in Europe, but portals have other plans. Today, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is announcing a new ad partnership with Nectar, the loyalty program for supermarket Sainsbury’s, where Yahoo will map online user data onto consumer spending data in an effort to offer more relevant ad opportunities for brands.
Consumer Connect, as the program is called, is aimed squarely at brands sold in supermarkets. This group has been the “laggard” in digital media spend because “it’s difficult to track buying of these kinds of goods online,” says Mark Rabe, the MD and VP of sales for Yahoo UK and Ireland…
In the UK, 25 percent of all media spend goes into digital, but the supermarket business, which last year spent £3.5 billion on advertising, only invests 1 percent, according to Nielsen. Yahoo has been marketing the same service in the U.S. since 2003, under the name Consumer Direct. The idea is to extend the UK service to other international markets in future, as well as third-party sites that run Yahoo-network ads.
The move to grow its advertising base, and offer better targeting, comes as Yahoo continues to streamline its sprawling network of sites and cut costs. Most recently the company said it would close down its dedicated tech portal in March.
Rabe says Consumer Connect is based on data from about 20,000 Nectar loyalty card users who have opted in to the program and have Yahoo accounts. “Then we go to the Yahoo network and find people who look exactly like that group, and that becomes the segment we serve ads to,” says Rabe. In other words, the ads get served to more than just those Nectar card holders. Rabe would not say how many users would ultimately see those ads, which would change based on the campaign and get delivered to both online and mobile sites. Yahoo UK currently has around 23 million visitors every month to its properties, according to comScore.
After ads have been delivered, Yahoo and Nectar then analyse the spending patterns of those Nectar/Yahoo consumers who have been served the ads, which they would see when they were logged into a Yahoo service such as email, to see how and if they have responded to them.
Yahoo says it has six brands signed up for the targeted service so far, with the first of these, for Cadbury’s, live already. The deal between Yahoo and Nectar is exclusive for the next five years.

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