Yahoo

Yahoo will launch a lifestyle section in September as it strengthens its commercial potential via content.

The portal is in the process of finalising editorial and video content licensing deals with providers including fashion magazines Cosmopolitan, Grazia and Vogue, as well as The Guardian, Gurgle, Parentchannel.tv, Videojug and Delicious magazine, across relevant categories including food and drink, family and parenting, relationships, health and fashion & beauty.

The section will also feature blogs by Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox, Lady and the Scamp and Ellen Burney.

Yahoo Lifestyle, currently in beta, will officially launch in September when content and aggregation patterns will be live, according to a Yahoo spokeswoman.

AOL

Yahoo’s move to bolster its commercial prospects within the lifestyle sector comes as AOL UK announces its partnership with ITN to bring news, entertainment and lifestyle video content to the portal.

ITN will provide a range of videos daily across the AOL home page, news and entertainment channels. AOL has also recently announced plans to ramp up its editorial staff across the UK and US, with 400 new hires in total.

It’s also conducting a global review of its mobile strategy which will see the company expand its mobile ad inventory and restructure its teams on both sides of the Atlantic.

The shake-up of its mobile strategy comes soon after the appointment of David Temkin as AOL’s VP of mobile. “We’re looking at our international mobile strategy and planning how the teams will look,” he told new media age in his first UK interview.

AOL will make its editorial and mobile development teams work more closely in both the UK and US, according to Temkin. The shake-up will also see it sell in-app ad inventory in the UK for the first time, something it only does in the US at present.

“There are a number of advertising opportunities on mobile,” said Temkin. “We have ads in some of our apps and we’ll be monetising them better over time. As far as extending in-app mobile ad inventory to the UK goes, this is in progress. I can’t give a specific date when we’ll start selling ads in our apps in the UK but it’s something we do intend to do.”

In addition to introducing ad inventory into its mobile apps, AOL is bolstering its support of other app platforms and optimising its mobile web portal for smartphone users.

Microsoft

Meanwhile, Microsoft Advertising has formed a new UK Performance Account Management team to manage direct response and performance marketing campaigns across its UK network.

It says the team, including staff from its performance arm DrivePM and search teams, has been created as more brands look to buy performance marketing campaigns.

Chris Maples, sales director at Microsoft Advertising, said the team would demonstrate Microsoft’s quality within an ad network sector that now includes more than 90 companies, including Facebook, which ended its ad sales partnership with Microsoft last year.

“In the last few years we perhaps haven’t done things as well as we should in this space,” he said. “We have a reach of over 84% in the UK, and network quality is improving.”

The unit won’t be selling across Bing, although Maples said it would work closely with the Bing sales team as advertisers increasingly repurpose search campaigns for ads across the rest of the network.