Today we received an announcement from Yahoo UK that they will be discontinuing their Content Match product in Europe. If you are running ads within a European-targeted Yahoo account, your campaigns will be effected.

Just for clarity sakes, I will sample directly from the Yahoo notification:

“As a valued client we are writing to give you advance notice of the closure of our Content Match product in Europe.

The decision to close Content Match underlines our commitment to focus on our Sponsored Search and Display business and to simplify our solutions to deliver a high ROI for our advertisers.

Content Match will close on 31 March 2009, after which the product will no longer be supported.
All Advertisers should therefore opt out of the Content Match marketplace by this date.
Your account manager will be happy to assist you.

Opt-out instructions:
1.       Login to your account.
2.       Click on the ‘Administration’ tab.
3.       Click on the ‘Edit’ button next to ‘Tactic Settings’
4.       Set ‘Content Match Status’ to OFF.
5.       Click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

We aim to work with you to propose alternative products.”

Aside from focusing on sponsored search and display ads, I wonder what the underlying motivation is for Yahoo to make this decision? Honestly, I have never received great results from the US or UK content networks. Is the US content network soon to follow? We’ll keep you posted!