Yahoo! is a Leadership Sponsor of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival (January 19-29). This gives Y! exclusive access to the nine short film finalists in the festival and allows us to screen them on Screen as part of our first-ever Yahoo! Audience Award competition.

We’ve invited our audience of millions to kick back and watch the finalists, share them with friends, and vote on their faves. The filmmaker who scores the most votes will also score $5,000 to help support their next journey behind the camera.

The Bertolli sponsorship is a three-fold ad experience, all part of its “Ladles of Love” charitable campaign.

The Yahoo! Sundance site features warm, hearty-soup-toned Bertolli wallpaper on either side of the Sundance screen and the voting card. A 950×60 ad bridges the wallpaper across the top with a short animation of a Bertolli-red curtain swishing to either side to unveil a lovely ladle dripping with Bertolli meal soup, the steam wafting past the “Where to Buy” link.

The Sundance coverage on Movies features the same wallpaper along with a 300×250 ad simmering quietly to the right.

Bertolli on Yahoo! Screen_2

omg! Now complimented its celebrity sightings with 300×250 to the right as well.

Bertolli recognizes Y!’s unique ability not only to satisfy our users’ appetites with mouth-watering content, but to satisfy brands’ appetites with mouth-watering user reach.

To wit: Traffic to all Sundance coverage is driven from Yahoo!’s homepage as well as multiple promo ads running across the entire Yahooniverse, a Y!-created ad on the Bertolli site, tweeting from the filmmakers, and media coverage.

Can’t beat that with a ladle.

Click here and here to have a taste.

– Thomas T. Lady

Editor’s Note: This entry was reposted from the Yahoo! Advertising Blog. For more information, visit their site, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The general public will have access to nine short films from this year’s Festival by visiting sundance.yahoo.com, powered by Yahoo! Screen. Festival fans everywhere will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite of those nine short films. Fans will also get behind-the-scenes access to film and entertainment news, celebrities in attendance, and the biggest stories of the festival through Yahoo! Movies and omg!.

“Our programming efforts at this anchor event span across the network,” says Ross Levinsohn, EVP Americas. “They include providing behind-the-scenes access to the Sundance Festival on the Yahoo! Movies Sundance Blog, the latest celebrity news on omg!, and red carpet interviews on omg! NOW, our #1 rated celebrity news and entertainment video series. Our unique Festival film-related content and on-the-ground reporting, builds out Yahoo! as the online destination for the Festival.”

Yahoo! Screen is hosting short films premiering at Sundance
Beginning today and lasting through January 27, Yahoo! Screen will host a selection of short films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and chosen in close collaboration with the Festival and Yahoo! Movie editors. Film aficionados will have the chance to vote for their favorite, and on Saturday, January 28, at the Festival’s Official Awards Ceremony—Yahoo! will present the winning filmmaker with the inaugural Yahoo! Audience Award and $5000. Plus, the winning film will be given prominent placement on Yahoo!. All of the additional featured films will remain accessible on Yahoo! Screen for six additional weeks.

Throughout this celebration of independent cinema, Yahoo! Movies is providing exclusive film-related content and original news daily from our on-the-ground correspondents in Park City. omg! NOW host Kristen Aldridge will take her audience past the velvet ropes, providing insider access from Main Street to the hottest parties and biggest premieres.

The following short films are among those available now on Yahoo! Screen. So check out the site, watch the shorts, and vote for your favorite:

• ’92 Skybox Alonzo Mourning Rookie Card: Jim and Dave, two brothers who don’t like each other very much, are forced to come together when their dad dies in Kansas City. Dave is pretty sure he has an Alonzo Mourning Skybox Series rookie card, but Jim has other ideas.
• Aquadettes: A meditation on life, death, and synchronized swimming.
• The Arm: To keep up with social pressure in a technologically advanced world, Chance starts a texting relationship with Genevieve—a girl he meets at a yogurt shop. But tragedy forces Chance to realize that he was never in a relationship at all.
• Debutante Hunters: In the low country of South Carolina, some true southern belles reveal their more rugged side, providing a glimpse into what drives them to hunt in the wild.
• Dol (First Birthday): A gay Korean American man yearns for a family life that is just out of reach.
• Henley: Meet nine-year-old Ted Henley, budding motel manager and roadkill entrepreneur.
• Long Distance Information: Father always told us, “Never talk to strangers,” . . . But surely we have to phone home sometimes?
• Odysseus’ Gambit: During his lifetime, each man plays cosmic chess against the devil.
• Una Hora por Favora: A woman hires a day laborer for an hour and gets more than she bargained for.

Visit Yahoo! Screen and vote for your favorite short!

Back in September at Facebook’s f8 conference, we announced the Yahoo! News activity feature, putting your friends front and center in our U.S. Yahoo! News experience. And to our delight, more than 12 million of you have given it a try so far, discovering news stories and sharing what you are reading on Yahoo! with all your Facebook friends. Many of you who love to share your reading activity are young and socially-engaged (no surprise!), and this has quickly impacted the virality of Yahoo!’s content on Facebook, as demonstrated in their recent post about the most shared stories of 2011, showing that 12 of the 40 most shared stories this year came from Yahoo!. In business terms, we’ve seen traffic increase from Facebook to Yahoo! News more than300%.

Based on this success, we’re expanding this nifty Facebook integration to 26 more Yahoo! sites worldwide, including Yahoo! News sites spanning the globe from India to Brazil, Singaporeto Spainand beyond – and we’ve recently added it to US-based entertainment experiences, omg!, Yahoo! TV, Yahoo! Movies, and Yahoo! Games as well. The features are designed to bring a deeply personalized, social news experience to more of the content millions of people come to Yahoo! to read each day.

To build on this increasingly social content experience, an additional social feature, Notifications, has also launched in the US, alerting people to social conversations and other activity on Yahoo! that interest them such as feedback on reviews, responses to comments, and stock alerts. Notifications is found on the top of the page across most pages on Yahoo!, such as Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, omg!, Shine, and Yahoo! Travel.

We think this relatively new mode of discovering, navigating and enjoying news – through the lens of our friends – is reflective of how the Web is evolving today, and we’re excited to help your Yahoo! experience become even more personal for you.

Enjoy!

Mike Kerns, vice president of social and personalization, Yahoo!

Dreamworks announced the arrival of its new Shrek prequel “Puss in Boots” in true swashbuckling style with a purring pas de deux of custom rich media events on the Yahoo! Movies homepage and showtimes and tickets page.

The introductory animation features Puss striking a pose before he goes all feline on you and starts chasing a spotlight on the ground.

If you’re on the Movies homepage, that animation is rolled up into a 300 x 250 window on the right with a showtimes and tickets link, where you’re free to replay the animation within that space before clicking through. The showtimes and tickets page, meanwhile, contains the playful kitty and that elusive spotlight in a vertical column on the right.

Both pages offer a medley of rich media to immerse you in the world of this feline fairy tale. Most striking is the wallpaper, featuring Puss on the left and his female companion Kitty Softpaws on the right.

On either page you’re also given the option of pushing down the thin “Puss in Boots” bar along the top (which itself features a showtimes and tickets link), revealing a veritable dashboard of bewhiskered goodness, starting with the auto-playing preview (the Movies homepage preview is more in depth). You can also click through to Dreamworks’ official site for the movie, play games and, yet again if you haven’t already, get showtimes and tickets for a theater near you.

The “Puss in Boots” custom execution not only affords cat lovers the chance for a nip at the spirit of the film, but on a practical level, it provides cat doors to let you go explore the film even more and, most importantly, find a time and place to see it.

Click here to be whiskered away on the Yahoo! Movies home and showtime pages.

– Thomas T. Lady

Editor’s Note: This entry was reposted from the Yahoo! Advertising Blog. For more information, visit their site, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

To celebrate the opening of “Tower Heist,” a comedy starring the inimitable Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, Universal Pictures ran a full-page overlay ad on the Movies front page that’s just as fast-paced and frenetic as any heist film. And like the best heists, the ad catches you completely off-guard.

No sooner do you land on Movies homepage than you’re whisked away for a brief, but no less thrilling, introduction to the world of the movie and the players who people it.

You meet the whole gang on one of the upper floors of the penthouse tower…

…before the ad slings you outside and down to the ground floor with all the whiplash inducement of Willy Wonka’s wonky elevator…

…where we catch a brief glimpse of the haughty mug of Alan Alda’s antagonist…

…before finally arriving at the gilt elevator doors, which slide open to reveal the film’s two heist meisters.

The page mimics the elevator doors by closing the ad and returning you to the Movies front page, which retains the wallpaper while providing a user-initiated trailer on the right with links to showtimes and tickets.

The ad immerses you into the world of the film in a fun, fast style, doling out a taste of the heist without thieving too much of your time.

Click here to go on a caper with Ben and Eddie.

– Thomas T. Lady

Editor’s Note: This entry was reposted from the Yahoo! Advertising Blog. For more information, visit their site, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

As a sponsor, Yahoo! will premiere a select number of short films from the Festival on Yahoo! Movies, a leading online movie destination that reaches 27.5 million users per month.  Consumers will also be able to vote for an audience award, which will be presented to the winning filmmaker at the Short Film Awards party taking place during the Festival.  Stay tuned, as we will be announcing more details of our sponsorship at a later date.

We announced the news today at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  Ross Levinsohn, executive vice president of Yahoo! Americas, hosted an on-stage dialog with Robert Redford, founder and president of Sundance Institute, as well as Ben Silverman, founder and CEO of Electus. The discussion focused on the power of storytelling and its role in creating premium content.  For more information about Yahoo! at the Cannes festival, visit yadvertisingblog.com or advertising.yahoo.com.

Yahoo! Movies and Regal Entertainment Group, the largest movie theater chain in the U.S., have partnered on this promotion where movie-goers can “check in” via Facebook places on their smartphones at any Regal Entertainment Group Theater to get an instant mobile coupon to be redeemed at the concession stand. The voucher is only available by checking-in at popcorn.yahoo.net from any smartphone while inside a Regal location. The promotion will run until August 31, 2011 or until one million bags of popcorn have been redeemed.

According to Yahoo! Movies, the top-viewed summer movie trailer on Yahoo! Movies is Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with more than 12 million streams since its debut. However, according to a recent poll on Yahoo! Movies, which receives more than 24 million unique visitors per month, movie-goers are most excited to see Harry Potter in action.

Yahoo! Movies Poll: Which action hero are you most excited to see this summer?

• Harry Potter 31%
• Captain America 22%
• Capt. Jack Sparrow 19%
• Green Lantern 14%
• Thor 13%

Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!.  We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information – everything you care about – come together. It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you.  And we’ll demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.

Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek into the fun ideas and experiences we are dreaming up.  Starting May 18^th and throughout the year, you will begin to see finished new elements of the campaign, with many fun surprises across the Y! network, web and within venues such a cinemas, television and even in the air (on planes!).

The Yahoo! marketing campaign will show users how to tap into Yahoo’s industry-leading products and make the Internet far more personally relevant.  Starting a band? Yahoo! Search– a smarter, more personal search, will help you find the gear, gigs and guitar heroes you need to rock out.

Going to the movies? Yahoo! can entertain and enhance the cinema experience. Starting in the lobby before the movie starts, we will showcase Yahoo! products and properties through interactive panels. Using the new Sketch-a-Search app we can help you find a restaurant for after the movie.  At the start of the film, we’ll integrate Yahoo! Search into the movie trailers, simulating a Search Wow Module.

At 30,000 feet, Yahoo! will make it fun to travel. As passengers relax on airline flights, we entertain by showing how Yahoo! brings my world and the world together through our creative campaign and tailored Yahoo! content. Each flight will feature our full video campaign, and depending on the flight and time, Yahoo! content such as Funny or Die and other pieces of Yahoo! entertainment.

Keep track of the highest bid on a vintage skateboard on eBay, share your latest photos showing you landing that kickflip on Flickr and find out who’s dating who on Facebook —all from the comfort of your Yahoo! Homepage.

We can’t wait to share the new campaign where you spend a lot of your time- online. While scrolling through the “live” images you can add all your favorite items to your Yahoo! homepage. Making it relevant and personal.

So the next time you hop on a plane, check your email or go to the movies. Yahoo! can bring YOUR world and THE world together in one convenient place—wherever you are.

We realize there are many movie lists out there, but several things set Yahoo! Movies and our definitive “100 Movies to See Before You Die” lists apart from the others.   To begin with, we do not concentrate solely on American fare —over 20% of the “Modern Classics” are movies from abroad, representing France, China and other countries. What also sets us apart is the painstaking attention we paid to creating a full representation of the last two decades of cinema.  Whether your movie preferences are based upon laughs or tears, this is a list that has more than a few options for everyone.

Creating this list was incredibly enjoyable, but the fun really starts when we go live with the list: it’s your comments and honest opinions we most look forward to.  Just a few short days after posting the list, we have now received over 5,000 comments on the site, not including Facebook and Twitter responses.  As die-hard film fans we love nothing more than a healthy discourse about the 100 films you’ll see on Yahoo! Movies.  So enjoy and please weigh in!

-Sean Phillips,  Executive Producer Yahoo Movies

We’ve dedicated an entire section of Yahoo! Movies to this year’s awards show with the idea that Yahoo!’s Coverage of the Oscars starts with you! Let your voice be heard and make sure to cast a vote in our poll: “What do you want to see most when you watch the Oscars?” As of right now, 43% of you want to see who wins the big awards. You can also weigh in on who you think deserves to win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director.

Interested in seeing what the stars are wearing? We’ve got you covered with our Oscars Photo galleries including fashion photos from the red carpet, insider photos from the before and after parties, photos of the nominees, and photos from the many events taking place Sunday.

We also have a Featured Videos section, a News section, and an ongoing Oscars Blog.

Coverage of the 82^nd Annual Academy Awards is already underway with both OMG! and Yahoo! News feeding into the Oscars frenzy.

Want to be the best informed on this year’s likely winners and losers? We’ve broken down the Academy Awards by category to help you get a leg up on your friends in picking who will win Oscar gold, in How To Win Your Oscars Pool.

Find out why Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G/Borat/Brüno) went from being a presenter to sitting the award show out and watching from home!

Want an expert’s opinion? Who’s more suited to give Oscar picks than OUR favorite Oscar–namely Oscar the Grouch? Sesame Street’s seminal crab-apple took a few minutes to answer some questions on who he thinks the winners will be on Sunday. Check out Oscar the Grouch’s Oscar Picks.

Criticisms of this year’s hottest movies and highest contenders are outlined in Yahoo! News’ Controversies big and small dog Oscars contenders. Find out why there’s been outrage over Sigourney Weaver’s role in Avatar.

Red-carpet style predictions and fashion alerts are revealed in OMG!’s Glam Slam: Oscar Style!

Have your own opinion on the big winners and major upsets? Want to weigh in on some of the fashion wins and fails? Then we invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

On Facebook, be sure to check out the Yahoo! Movies fan page (Yahoo! Movies) where you can write captions to photos of your favorite celebs. We’ll be uploading fashion photos of the movie stars from the red carpet, and we’re asking you to submit your most witty captions via comment.

On Twitter, follow @YahooMovies for real-time info on Academy winners. Follow @YahooOMG for updates on fashion from the red carpet. Follow @YodelingMamas for a Mom-blogger’s point of view on the evening. And of course follow @Yahoo for an overall perspective.

See you on the red carpet–and may the best man, woman and picture win!

• Personal realtor: Home prices are lower than they’ve been in at least a decade – time for a deal! Good thing Yahoo! Real Estate just made house hunting a cinch. Scribbling down lists of listings? Bummed you missed that great new house when it came on the market? You can now save both your searches and your favorite houses with one click. You can also sign up for alerts for new pads that meet your criteria or when the price changes on a place you’ve been eyeing. What’s more, you can get listing updates via My Yahoo! or any RSS feed reader. If only we could figure out how to fix those banks! Check it out here.
• Summer flick fiesta: So many movies, so few summer nights. The new Yahoo! Movies Summer Movie Guide just hit the street and it lets you get a preview of the great new titles coming out this summer. Browse by month, genre, or popularity. Each movie summary includes a recap of the story, the release date, three good reasons to see it, and trivia you might not know. You’ll also find photos and video trailers and clips (many in HD). You’ve got a lot of popcorn in your future.

And finally, a plug for this weekend’s celebration of Flickr’s 5.25th birthday. If you’re in San Francisco, come by for cupcakes and divine photography from 4-8pm tomorrow. RSVP here. Can’t make it? Check out the photos we’ll be projecting on the walls.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

Let’s check out the numbers. The 2008 Emmy Awards averaged 12.2 million viewers, down 6% and the lowest ratings ever for an Emmy telecast. Yet the day after the awards, 4.6 million people flocked to Yahoo! TV and generated 103 million page views (nearly doubled year over year). This year’s SAG Awards drew the smallest audience since TBS and TNT began airing them together in 2006 –- with 5.3 million viewers, down 12% from 2007. The next day, 4.1 million people flooded Yahoo! Movies for its best and worst dressed gallery and checked out 83 million pages. And although the 3-hour Golden Globes won a coveted Sunday night time slot, this year’s star-studded telecast drew the lowest ratings in 13 years –- 14.6 million viewers, down from 20 million the year before. The next day, 7.2 million people descended on omg!, taking in an average of about 40 page views per person, driven mainly by an insatiable appetite for photos.

So all is not lost — we’re still just as obsessed with celebrities and their red carpet fashion foibles. Possibly more so than ever. But we’re just turning to a different screen to view it — during and after the show. So don’t cancel your Oscars party on Sunday. Just make sure you have a laptop next to the popcorn.

Sibyl Goldman
GM, Yahoo! Entertainment

• Vista IM revisited: Thanks to you bug hunters out there, we’ve squashed some issues in a refreshed version of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Preview. It’s now more stable and responsive and features enhancements like a new look. There’s more work on the roadmap, but our thanks to the diehards for helping make it a better experience. More here.
• Indie action: Even if you’re not knee-deep in powder, rubbing elbows with moguls of independent film, you can still follow the action at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Yahoo! Movies’ Independent Film Guide gives you an overview of this year’s films, the latest news, and photo galleries of the attending stars. No tickets or Uggs required.
• Idol module: If you love off-key performances, Simon’s barbs, Paula’s tears, dawg encouragements, stunning comebacks, and Kajagoogoo hairstyles, now’s the time to add EW.com’s new American Idol module to your My Yahoo!. You’ll get show recaps, commentary, and predictions every time you log in to your page. Hurry, auditions are underway. Find it here.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.