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British Airways First to Advertise on the New Yahoo! UK & Ireland Home Page
London, 27th September, 2002. British Airways has signed up to be the first rich media advertiser on Yahoo!'s newly redesigned home page. Yahoo! will be supporting British Airways in positioning the airline as a competitive short haul airline with its 'Have you seen how small our prices are?' campaign.
On the 2nd October 2002, a British Airways page peel alteration will run on the home page. This is the first time it has ever happened in Yahoo! UK & Ireland's history and is a major opportunity for Yahoo's key partners. The innovative and impactful execution was lead by itraffic, British Airways long standing interactive agency. itraffic worked closely with Yahoo!'s sales and technical team and was responsible for the innovative media strategy and brokering the deal on behalf of British Airways.
Russell Cleeve, British Airways Online Advertising Manager, states "This is another example of itraffic developing concepts that help British Airways achieve its objectives while keeping focus on innovation."
Yahoo! UK & Ireland has enhanced its home page and Yahoo! Mail design to offer its marketing services clients a variety of fresh new advertising placements, making it even easier to incorporate rich media and other new creative tools into homepage advertising campaigns.
The redesign is part of the company's continual efforts to improve the user experience on the Internet. The process involved a worldwide collaboration between Yahoo!'s local GUI (Graphical User Interface) teams - which encompassed designers, illustrators, usability engineers and interaction engineers.
In addition to beta testing, Yahoo! conducted in-depth user research to understand attitudes surrounding Internet consumption. The qualitative study of key target audience groups concentrated on three areas; Internet usage, attitudes to Yahoo! and an exploration into perceptions of web page design through worldwide usability testing.
Alick Mighall, Head of Production at Yahoo! UK & Ireland commented: "The research concluded that the overall design should present the users with fun, friendly imagery tempting users to widen their usage of the site and encouraging them to understand Yahoo! as more then just a search engine. As part of Yahoo!'s commitment to understanding Internet consumption and the demands of the consumer, the research and beta testing were an integral part of the decision making process, when designing the new home page. Yahoo! is committed to evolving to reflect changing customer needs and we believe that the new improved home page offers our users the best ever Yahoo! experience."
The new interface enables consumers to access their favourite Yahoo! products and services more easily. A Personal Assistant module greets Yahoo! customers and gives them direct access to essential Yahoo! services like Mail, Calendar and Address Book.
Users of Yahoo! Mail will now also have a more colourful and streamlined look with easy to use drop-down menus, key commands and automatic new contact entries into Address Book.
The new home page will be officially launched across Europe in the first week of October, 2002.
Contacts:
Hannah Montgomery tel:020 7395 7013 or email montgomh@fleishman.com
Philippe Pendaries tel: 020 7395 7054 or email: pendarip@fleishman.com
Notes to Editors:
Yahoo.co.uk is one of the most popular and most visited websites in the UK & Ireland, generating over 688 million page views in January 2002 and 10 million unique users January 2002 (ABC Electronics).
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! reaches more than 237 million individuals worldwide each month, and is the No. 1 Internet brand globally. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 World properties and is available in 13 languages.
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