Yelp expands Agency Development Program with new agency partners

As advertisers further diversify their ad programs with full-funnel solutions that can achieve both branding and performance benchmarks, we’ve seen our enterprise ads business continue to grow, with new brands and agencies utilizing our first party data, as well our on- and off-platform ad products, to achieve their advertising goals. Today, I’m pleased to share that we’re expanding Yelp’s Agency Development Program with new agency partners Tinuiti, Assembly and Performics to provide education series, unique insights, and innovative advertising opportunities and pilot programs for leading media agencies interested in investing in ads for enterprise clients.

While we’ve worked with media agencies for years, we formed our Agency Development Program in early 2022 to create new opportunities for agencies and streamline processes. Today, the program provides an opportunity for large independent agencies, as well as those owned by holding companies, to partner with Yelp on incentive-based ad programs for their clients. The program now includes over thirty of the leading media agencies, including: 

• Tinuiti partners with Yelp to drive advertising success for their clients via an agency incentive program that encourages new clients to test Yelp’s effectiveness. In leveraging this program, Tinuiti is exploring multiple advertising opportunities for their slate of clients across the home and local services, retail and finance categories.

• Stagwell agency Assembly joined Yelp’s agency development program earlier this year to help its clients reach Yelp’s high intent audiences. In addition to providing incentives, Yelp is an official partner of Assembly’s Partners for Progress initiative, a new program that aims to drive sustained transformation across the creative and media supply chain. Yelp offers Assembly clients the mechanism to sponsor and amplify collections of self-identified, minority owned businesses on the Yelp platform.

• Performics partners with Yelp to create value for a host of clients looking to drive foot traffic to their brick and mortar businesses or engage with consumers to make purchases online. In leveraging this program, Yelp helps Performics take advantage of our audience and new products and opportunities to deliver strong results for their clients. 

The expansion of our Agency Development Program creates new opportunities for the increasing number of advertisers coming to Yelp to leverage our high-intent audiences. What makes our audience unique is its ready-to-spend but undecided nature, which gives advertisers the opportunity to engage across the customer’s journey, from when Yelp users begin their search through purchase. We’ve also built out Yelp Audiences, a channel for non-location based brands, which unlocks value for advertisers without brick and mortar locations. 

Our users’ search habits and purchase behaviors offer us invaluable insights into their life stages which marketers can leverage for advertising and much more. For example, we’ve worked with coffee chains to share insights about the latte flavors people are searching for on Yelp to inform their product strategy. But Yelp doesn’t just help people find the best café or happy hour spot anymore — we’re a trusted resource for movers and new homebuyers seeking realtors, brides searching for venues and tailors, and new parents in need of daycare options.

Yelp’s multi-location and brand advertising business continues to expand, most recently growing approximately 15% year-over-year from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023.* A significant contributor to this growth has been the early success of agency development, which has more than doubled in revenue from 2020 to 2022.

“We’re excited to deepen our partnership with Yelp through its new program, as well as our own Partners for Progress initiative,” said Shannon Pruitt, global chief content & partnership innovation officer at Assembly. “Yelp serves as a valuable platform for Assembly clients looking to support and amplify underrepresented local businesses and reach the platform’s high-intent audiences. We find Yelp’s focus on elevating diverse voices through products and features like its Black-owned and LatinX-owned business attributes to be very valuable for our clients.”

For advertisers, Yelp provides a great full-funnel opportunity to capture our audiences as they begin their search through their purchase decision. In fact, 83% of users hire or buy from a business they found on Yelp.** We also work with brands like Starbucks, AB InBev, Kraft Heinz and T-Mobile to help them achieve their advertising goals.

If you are interested in learning more about Yelp’s Agency Development Program, visit Yelp for Brands.