Yahoo details plans for new online ad sales system

Yahoo Inc on Sunday detailed plans for its forthcoming Web
advertising management system that gives its ad sales-partners access to online
ad space both on Yahoo and other major sites.

The widely anticipated system, known as AMP!, aims to
simplify the process of buying and selling online ads for advertisers, ad
agencies, fast-growing ad trading networks and Web site publishers.

The ad management system seeks to capitalize on Yahoo’s
strength as a Web site publisher that reaches 500 mln Web users monthly and
recent efforts to sell ads off of Yahoo through major partnerships or
specialized ad-sales networks.

The planned advertising system, formerly code-named Apex, is
the lynchpin of the company’s strategy to reach outside its own base of users
and increase its position as the “must buy” location for online
advertisers.

While the strategy remains in its early stages, AMP! is one
of the products which Yahoo management believes will help propel the Web
pioneer’s next wave of growth. It is also one factor behind Yahoo’s reluctance
to accept Microsoft Corp’s unsolicited takeover bid currently valued at $42.4 bln, which executives believe undervalues the company’s assets.

AMP! will be introduced in stages starting in the third
quarter of this year, Yahoo said. It aims to give individual sites the capacity
to sell ads across the Web, replacing single-site systems that still use e-mail
and even faxes.

AMP! is a suite of tools that offers precise geographic,
demographic, and interest-based targeting across a vast network of Yahoo sites
and ad sales deals Yahoo has struck with more than 600 newspapers, Comcast and
eBay Inc.

It also includes niche Web sites such as WebMD, Forbes, the
major ad networks, and thousands of smaller sites on the Web.

In its initial stages, AMP! is designed to expand the reach
of dedicated sales forces at newspapers or sites such as WebMD to allow them to
reach many times larger audiences outside of their own sites, where they can
cross-sell their advertising.