Yahoo Pairs Display, Search Sales for Non-Brand Advertisers

Yahoo’s latest online ad hire brings it closer to integrating its display and search offerings. The company hired former Microsoft ad sales director Seth Dallaire to head up Yahoo’s search and display ad sales teams serving mid-market advertisers.

Until now, Yahoo’s mid-market search and display sales departments were separate. Now, the heads of those teams will report to Dallaire, according to a Yahoo spokesperson. Dallaire started with Yahoo October 1.

While the firm’s mid-market salespeople do have contact with their accounts, their approach to their market differs from that of Yahoo’s more hands-on field sales team. The mid-market reps serve large advertisers that do much of their search ad buying and management on their own through Yahoo’s automated system; these clients tend to be direct response advertisers.

“These advertisers don’t need the field sales rep, the face-to-face rep working with them,” the spokesperson told ClickZ News.

The field sales team, on the other hand, deals directly with large brand advertisers. “Brand advertisers have a different set of needs,” added the spokesperson.

Yahoo has made moves to break down the walls between display and search in the past few years. In 2007, the firm announced it would combine its separate display and search advertising departments into one holistic operation, the goal being to make it easier for advertisers to place integrated search and display campaigns. Clearly Yahoo still had some work to do to achieve its promised sales force consolidation.

The company also has indicated it wants to enable search and display ad buys through a single platform. It is unclear how far along Yahoo is in that pursuit.