Yahoo to acquire Polyvore in shopping-advertising push

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has acquired fashion commerce startup Polyvore in an attempt to increase its portfolio for advertisements. Similar to Pinterest, Polyvore is a “digital corkboard” with 20m unique monthly visitors that enables users to customise clothing and accessories from retailers.

Yahoo and Polyvore will power native shopping ads that drive traffic and sales to retailers.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is said to have led the proceedings for the acquisition, asserting the importance of advertising as a large part in the decision to purchase Polyvore.

Financial terms of the deal announced on Friday aren’t being disclosed, signaling the price of the acquisition isn’t considered to be significant. But earlier this year, Polyvore switched to cost-per-click advertising, meaning the company earns a fee for users who click through ads. Polyver’s native ad model will also be adapted by the company, as native ads tend to look like the website’s main content and don’t resemble conventional ads.

The pioneering Internet firm planned to use Polyvore to beef up the e-commerce potential of its digital magazines and other online products.

Yahoo’s growth strategy is build around its different content verticals focused on areas such as food and health or tech and fashion and so on and the latest Polyvore acquisition is in line with that strategy.

Once the leading portal on the Internet, Yahoo is now struggling to ramp up its mobile and advertising businesses after being outpaced by the likes of Google and Facebook.

Polyvore was founded in 2007 by Jianing Hu, Guangwei Yuan and Pasha Sadri, former engineers at Yahoo. She was asked to join the company to solve these issues herself.

In 2012, Polyvore, which reportedly has over 20 million monthly users and offices in Mountain View, San Francisco and New York, received a $14 million Series C funding from investors including DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners.