Weekend Edition programming will cover a wide range of topics, including travel and leisure, culture, family, and healthy living. In addition to featuring content from across the Yahoo! network and from Yahoo!’s content partners, Weekend Edition will be anchored by an original video series with several high-profile hosts, including:

• Dominique Dawes, a three-time Olympic gymnast who contributed to Yahoo! Sports as an analyst and correspondent from the Olympic Games in China and Vancouver
• Harry Hurt, an award-winning journalist and author of six books and the Executive Pursuits column in The New York Times, for which he hosted related Web videos
• Jim Brasher, host of the new series “Way of Life” that will air on The Discovery Channel’s international outlets

Buick will be seamlessly integrated into the Weekend Edition experience in a way that aligns with its goal of providing people with content that enriches and broadens their view of the world and keeps them ahead of the curve. One element of the integration is a branded segment, “Discovered by Buick,” at the end of every video, which will relate to the content of the video.

Weekend Edition will live on Yahoo! News and be promoted across the Yahoo! network.

Yahoo! has a long history of developing and distributing original premium programming that seamlessly incorporates advertiser messages into creative content that engages consumers and meets marketer objectives. Yahoo!’s successes in the original programming and branded entertainment space include: “Primetime in No Time,” the most watched original program online; “Tech Ticker,” the most watched finance show online; and “Who Knew?“, which recently became the most successful original program to launch on Yahoo!, with more than 40 million streams in the first four months.

The portal, which debuted today, is a leap forward in communicating and showcasing Yahoo!’s advertising solutions for mid-to-large tier advertisers and agencies, giving Yahoo! a powerful vehicle to drive B2B Marketing goals and re-establish the company as a thought leader in the industry.

Most importantly, the portal intends to foster a water-cooler environment for marketers, ad creatives, producers, publishers, and other advertising execs to be educated and inspired by Yahoo!-specific and industry-related content. Together with award-winning advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Yahoo!’s engineering, UED, and B2B teams worked hard to construct a content-rich experience within a modern visual design.

The content on the portal combines two key elements of engagement: inspiration and information/education. With demos, videos, articles, and more, the site provides valuable and relevant info to help Yahoo!’s core audiences.

In addition to offering updated content on properties, products, audiences, and services, Yahoo! is proud to announce the new Futurist Series, kicking off with a video keynote by New York Times best-selling author Seth Godin (named “America’s Best Marketer” by American Way magazine). The portal also features a Y! Expert Q&A video series with industry knowledge from the likes of Yahoo! insiders Chris Barr and Lesley Kao.

Other areas to check out include: Creative Canvas, a collection of inspiring and engaging ads found at the Inspiration tab; Industry Knowledge, where you can tune in to the latest industry events and read news, insights, and blogs (such as Adweek, Digital Daily, MediaMemo, and more); and Y! Media Kit, which features a collection of easy-to-download insights, case studies, and research papers.

Say hello to Advertising Solutions, the new Yahoo! portal that promises to inspire, inform, educate, and help advertisers and agencies do business in new and creative ways.—Kylee Swenson Gordon

Here’s how it works

1. We’ll invite an interesting speaker to a local Jelly, have ‘em talk for 30-45 minutes.
2. We’ll stream the talk live so Jellies around the world can tune in.
3. After the talk, anyone watching can ask the speaker questions via live chat.

Through a Meebo chat in page and a Twitter feed the global audience can ask questions and receive answers by using the Twitter hash tag i#jellytalks

Gary Vaynerchuk will talk about personal branding, consumer branding and business equity. He will touch on how he used social tools to engage his audience and how you can do the same from yourself or your business.
March 19th, 2010 – 2:30pm EST

More on the speaker:
Gary Vaynerchuk is a New York Times bestselling author and American businessman who was born in Belarus and immigrated to the United States as a young child. Gary’s entrepreneurial instincts took over at a young age, when he owned a franchise of neighborhood lemonade stands and made $1,000 a weekend selling baseball cards. Much to his dismay, his father Sasha pulled Gary into the family business, a local liquor store called Shopper’s Discount Liquors. Before long, Gary recognized that consumers collected rare wines just like people collected baseball cards, and he was off to the races. Gary transformed himself into a wine expert, rebranded the store as Wine Library, launched a retail website in 1997, and by 2008 he had raised annual revenue from $4 million to $60 million. In 2006 Gary achieved one of his life-long goals when he was caricatured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in an article about online wine sales.