Yahoo aims to double UK ad revenue

The company said today that it has raided a 'hotbed of high-profile traditional media companies,' including Viacom, The Financial Times, MTV, EMAP and ZenithOptimedia, for new talent.

Stephen Haines, who joins from Viacom Outdoor, is heading up the new Strategic Agency team, which is dedicated to communicating the benefits of using online ads in major branding campaigns to agency planners and strategists.

The online advertising market has grown rapidly over the last year, as more and more traditional brands have embraced the medium. The UK's Internet Advertising Bureau recently said that it was confident total online ad spend for 2003 would reach £300m for the first time, more than £100m up on 2002.

In addition, Yahoo UK & Ireland booked 62 of the top 100 advertisers last year, up from just 40 in 2002.

"Over the last six months it has become clear that online is on the verge of the tipping point and with the help of industry experts we have planned our sales expansion around this," said Alison Reay, national sales director, Yahoo! UK & Ireland.

"We want our own sales operation to reflect that of traditional media companies by inputting our own strategists into the planning process, especially as we know that online is becoming increasingly important and effective for wider brand campaigns."

Yahoo has now separated its UK sales team into a number of core teams: Strategic Agency Sales, Client Sales, Online Agency Sales, Planning & Strategy and the Client Services team.

Richard Stokes from Initiative Media has joined as head of sales planning within the Planning & Strategy Team, which will support the entire Yahoo UK sales team.

The sales team expansion and new structure was the result of a six-month consultation period between media agency expert and former sales director at the Daily Star, Chris Marston, and the heads of the top 20 traditional media agencies.

Marston spent six months working inside Yahoo to try and obtain an understanding of the level of traditional agencies' online knowledge and also to ascertain how they wanted to interact with Yahoo.

Today's announcement comes just three months after Yahoo ramped up its European sales operation with two newly created senior roles.

Former MSN head of sales Dominic Trigg joined as director of European advertising operations, while Lisa Mundy, previously head of advertising operations at Freeserve, was appointed as head of European operations.

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