Yahoo's New 'Gemini' Tool Ties Mobile Ads and Native Search Together The tech giant makes a noteworthy move in the mobile market, but is it enough to put it on par with Facebook and Twitter?
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Yahoo has long talked a big talk about making a bigger, better footprint in the mobile advertising game. Now, with Gemini, a tool the company just launched that combines native search and mobile ads, it just might be able to walk the walk -- or at least make a move on Twitter and Facebook's fat slice of the mobile pie.
Gemini, which Yahoo yesterday announced on Tumblr, is a self-serve all-in-one solution for native advertising and mobile search. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet giant is calling the "unified marketplace" tool the first of its kind to tie the two ad styles together. (Like twins? Presumably that's how they came up with the name Gemini.)
Related: Yahoo Picks Up Social Diary Startup for a Reported $10 Million
"With Yahoo Gemini, advertisers get the performance and ease of search, combined with the scale and creativity of native advertising," said Jay Rossiter, senior vice president of Yahoo's cloud platform group, and Adam Cahan, senior vice president of the company's mobile and emerging products division, in the announcement. "By bringing the two together, advertisers can now buy, manage and optimize their mobile search and native ad spend in one place — driving greater performance and higher impact for their businesses and brands."
Related: At Yahoo, a $42 Billion Change of Heart
Advertisers can access Gemini from the Yahoo Ad Manager, the self-service ad-buying platform that CEO Marissa Mayer introduced in her CES keynote speech on Jan. 7, earlier this year. Previously, advertisers would have had to manage Yahoo's mobile search ads using the Bing Ads platform.