• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 7, 2023

Yahoo Finance took a gamble with the most redesign of its website and went with a “user-centric” approach.

The goal, avoid clickbait and reduce display ads by 40%, aims to create a premium experience for visitors and advertisers.

With 80% better viewability above the fold, Yahoo says the interface bodes well for advertisers. Early tests suggest the change yields more than 4-times greater ad click-through rates as a result less ads, leading to improved eCPM rates for both desktop and mobile visitors.

Tapan Bhat, president and GM of Yahoo Finance, believes that while high-volume, programmatic ads continue to dominate the internet, Yahoo takes "a quality over quantity approach." It's about driving meaningful engagement vs flooding the site with meaningless ads.

The redesign focuses on simplicity and functions to give advertisers an opportunity to reach the site’s affluent readership, estimating there are 8 million investors with portfolios valued at more than $1 million.

This affluent target audience for advertisers are less tolerant of non-relevant ads appearing next to stock tickers serving information on their investments.

The updated news hub provides a dedicated place to keep up with markets, earnings, economy, and more with expanded coverage across banking, retail, and healthcare, and features premium partner content. It offers fewer third-party paywalls and clickbait. New original programming from Yahoo Finance Live highlights expert interviews with industry thought leaders and live coverage of the market events. 

Portfolio view also got an upgrade. Investors have a 360-degree portfolio view of their connected 401K, IRA, savings, and trading accounts from various financial institutions to monitor diversification, risk, and performance in one place. 

Yahoo Finance’s portfolio view now includes transaction management to record Buy, Sell, Sell-Short, and Buy-to-Cover trades with automatic first-in-first-out (FIFO) lot management. The new interface also automatically tracks dividends as they are earned and allows investors to manage cash holdings like any other asset. 

There’s more market data, enhanced charts that give easy access to more than 40 years of historical data, SEC filings, analyst ratings, research reports, and more. There are more than 100 customizable indicators that investors can use to create and share technical analysis.