Yahoo! UK & Ireland today introduces the first Strategic Agency Team in the online sector to spearhead the company's sales operation. The team will work exclusively with traditional media agencies to ensure that, with its recent growth, online continues to be integrated and planned into major brand campaigns. Yahoo! has doubled the size of its sales team from a hot-bed of high-profile traditional media companies, including Viacom, The Financial Times, The Mirror, ZenithOptimedia, OMD, MTV, Chrysalis Radio and EMAP.

Yahoo! predicted and witnessed the tipping point early in 2003 at which point it had already reached the previous year's total annual revenue figure. Over the last six months more and more traditional brands have started rethinking the role that the internet plays in terms of branding campaigns to reach young and affluent audiences. This shift is also evident through an influx of major advertisers - in 2003 Yahoo! UK & Ireland booked 62 of the top 100 advertisers compared to 40 in 2002.
This shift is supported by the recent findings of the annual IAB / PWC study , as online advertising, as a proportion of all advertising spend, is now about double the size of cinema and already about half the size of radio, based on their historic performances. The UK appears set to break through the £300m milestone for the full year for the first time in 2003, a £100 million increase on 2002. At the same time, media consumption of online is growing at a faster rate than any other medium with online at 9% compared to 2% for magazines, 1% for cinema and 12% for newspapers.
Alison Reay, National Sales Director, Yahoo! UK & Ireland says, "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. 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, in addition to traditional direct response. It was vital for us to enhance our existing sales operation and I am delighted to be able to welcome such an enormous range of talent into the Yahoo! team.

We offer a young very affluent audience who are cash rich and time poor and we know that we provide a unique way for advertisers to reach them. Moving forward we want to be able to talk to our clients about reaching this demographic in ways that are unique to online and to Yahoo!".

Media agency expert, Chris Marston, previously sales director at the Daily Star, spent six months inside Yahoo! working with the heads of the top 20 traditional media agencies to obtain an understanding of their level of online knowledge and also to ascertain how they wanted to interact with Yahoo!.

The result is the completely new Strategic Agency Team, which is solely dedicated to working with traditional offline strategic planners and is headed up by Stephen Haines, who joins from Viacom Outdoor. In his new role Stephen will capitalise his team's industry experience to communicate the benefits of using online in mixed media branding campaigns to agency planners and strategists.

In addition Richard Stokes from Initiative Media, has joined as Head of Sales Planning within the Planning & Strategy Team. His new team of agency strategic planners, originating from companies such as ZenithOptimedia, McCann, Initiative and OMD, will use their experience to support the entire sales team with collateral to help sell the Yahoo! audience in the same currency as other media. They will also provide industry understanding and decide the best ways to communicate Yahoo!'s proposition to key customers.

The new department now comprises of a number of core teams: Strategic Agency Sales, Client Sales, Online Agency Sales, Planning & Strategy & the Client Services team. The team has doubled in size with a view to doubling its income over the next 12 months. Significantly, the hires and new structure are designed to position Yahoo! alongside traditional media companies rather than its online competitors. Most of the hires originate from traditional offline media companies bringing significant media industry experience to the team.

New vertical sector expertise has significantly boosted the Client Sales team which will focus on growing Yahoo!'s entertainment, finance, motors, telecoms & travel properties. All other teams remain the same, however, each one has seen its headcount increased to ensure that Yahoo! continues to deliver the best possible service to its customers.

Yahoo! is supporting its sales activity by issuing a comprehensive guide to Yahoo!, the internet, online creativity and branding. This guide demonstrates the strength of online advertising and highlights how the internet fits within the traditional media mix to existing & potential customers. It includes independent research showing how Yahoo!'s ABC1 young and affluent audience use the site and provides information about the marketing solutions available to reach this desirable audience. The guide works alongside Yahoo!'s ongoing commitment to boosting online creativity through its Creative Workshops programme and Creative Summit activity.