Tonight we’re announcing the acquisition of Right Media, which I believe has the potential to dramatically enhance Internet advertising. We hope to revolutionize the way ads are bought and sold on the Internet and, in turn, drive more value for advertisers, publishers, and partners.

As new forms of content continue to increase on the Web, so do the opportunities for advertisers to get their message across. This growing inventory is driving a significant transition in the online ad world, with third-party ad networks and exchanges gaining share of the total online ad dollars. This obviously represents a growth opportunity and it’s why we made a 20% investment in Right Media in October.

Right Media connects the various online ad players (advertisers, publishers, ad networks) in an open and efficient way. Its marketplace provides a world where non-guaranteed inventory is bought and sold without barriers — an entirely free flow of information. As a result, we believe advertisers gain great new users at the best prices, and publishers see the true value of their inventory and sell every impression for as much money as possible. Everyone wins.

We think supply and demand should be regulated by the marketplace, not a closed platform. Right Media provides a democratic model that empowers advertisers with all of these benefits. We think our open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and will provide significant benefits to publishers and advertisers.

This acquisition will help Yahoo! build on its leadership in online advertising. We’ve been moving aggressively over a number of months to enhance our leading ad tools and capabilities, through initiatives like Panama and major partnerships like those with eBay and a consortium of more than 260 newspapers. Right Media builds on those efforts by helping us not only realize more value from our inventory, but also continue to transform how advertisers and publishers connect to their audiences.

We see this as a key step in executing our long-term vision to build the industry’s leading advertising and publishing ecosystem — both on and off Yahoo!’s network.

Right Media employees, welcome to the Yahoo! family. We’re excited by your deep industry, technical, advertising and publisher knowledge, and look forward to working with a team of such high caliber and expertise.

Terry Semel
Chairman & CEO

Last summer, I wrote about how Yahoo! hit the airwaves with super-wedgies, projectile motorists, and reincarnated pets to launch the new Yahoo.com. Today, we’re upping the ante with more bold and quirky ads that you’ll catch online, on TV, in a movie theater near you, and on the radio.

We’re launching the most integrated and interactive brand campaign in company history, taking last year’s theme of “life is better with Yahoo!” to the next level. In partnership with our ad team, Soho Square and OgilvyOne Worldwide, we’ve come up with a simple call to action that puts you in charge: drum roll please… “Be a Better ____.” Why should you care? This campaign is essentially all about you and helping you enhance that bit of your life you’ve always wanted to be better at.

Don’t be afraid of the blank — it’s the best part. Fill it in with whatever you want, as many times as you like. Think big or small. Want to be a better Casanova? A better know-it-all? Better thrill seeker? Better fashionista? Everybody wants to better at something and we think you can find that nirvana on Yahoo!.

While the campaign spans many of our products, it highlights two products in particular: Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! oneSearch. Using the special-sauce formula that’s worked so well in the past (our “Garden” spot won the third funniest commercial title in the U.S. last year), we’ll show you how dramatically different life is with and without Yahoo! — absurdly, of course, through man-eating plants, potent herbal enhancers, and spine-straightening laser beams. Check them out here! (Starting this Saturday, you can even mix and match your own endings — stay tuned.)

The television spots will debut tonight on NBC’s “Wedding Crashers,” “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and “Last Call With Carson Daly” and ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” so wait until tomorrow to “be a better channel hopper.” They’ll also air over the next month during other shows on NBC, Fox, ABC, MTV, Comedy Central, fuse, and TBS, with radio spots airing today across major U.S. markets. And if you go to the movies this summer, you’ll want to get there before the previews start.

Now for the behind-the-scenes skinny: It took about a week to shoot both TV spots in Southern California. We brilliantly picked the coldest and windiest time of year to be in L.A.’s Griffith Park for the “Explorer” commercial. In fact, we almost had two casualties, as two rather substantial trees came crashing down on the precise location where I’d been standing with SoHo Square managing director Alda Abbracciamento just moments earlier.

For the “Handyman” shoot, we found ourselves in Downey (home of the world’s first Taco Bell restaurant) on an empty studio lot that looked like Wisteria Lane with just suburban facades. The most memorable moments came during breaks we had to take between every “Handyman” take to let the actor who played Grandpa take a load off. He often entertained us with toe-tapping harmonica jams. We also had a good time with the visitors who jumped out of hiding (gorillas, clowns, bikini-clad maidens, ninjas) — you’ll see them again when you remix your own commercial.

We had a blast pulling this campaign together, and hope you’ll enjoy interacting with it. Let us know what you think!

Allen Olivo
Vice President, Global Brand Marketing

When you’re done doing your best Shaggy impersonation to celebrate Casey Kasem’s 75th (zoinks!), take a look at the snacks o’ the week.

• No more la la la-ing required: Why hum the words when you can sing the entire chorus with confidence. Now find more than 400,000 licensed song lyrics for free on Yahoo! Music. All you have to do is insert a partial lyric or phrase into the Yahoo! Music search bar and voila! No more excuses for singing “I wanna piece of bacon” to the Ramones’ famous anthem.
• Swing batta batta: Baseball fanatics can now hoot and holler for their fantasy baseball teams from the couch using Yahoo! Sports for TV. If you’ve got a Windows Media Center device, you can watch your fantasy lineup hit home runs and view real-time updates on your team’s scores without missing a single minute of the live game on TV. The best part — you control what you see right from the TV remote! Read more about what else the team’s got brewing.
• Video replay: When you’re not in front of the TV, catch video clips of every NBA playoff game on Yahoo! Sports. You’ll get highlights from the finals, top plays, game previews, and press conference recaps with Toronto Raptors Forward Chris Bosh, providing all the juicy post-season action. And starting April 29, we’re adding highlights of MLB’s top 10 homeruns and defensive plays of the week. So grab some chips, a drink of your choice, and your mouse — you have lot of plays to view again and again.
• Online soap box: Not only can you find out all you ever wanted to know about the 2008 elections at Yahoo! Elections, you can be part of Internet history. That’s right, folks. Mark your calendars for the first-ever online-only presidential debates (two of them) to take place after Labor Day with both Democrat and Republican candidates. You’ll have the chance to ask questions directly of the candidates, participate in real-time, and even rate their performance. Whatever side you represent, who wouldn’t love feeding questions to PBS’ Charlie Rose (did I mention he’s moderating both debates?).

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… feet from home plate. But the geeks among you know why this is a knee-slapper. No official comment on whether this might’ve been the work of a someone with a deliberate sense of irony. Or just a really awesome coincidence.

Photo from jkenning

Give love to the earth today, Sunday and every day. After you’ve started your carbon-free diet, check out the goodies we’ve cooked up.

• Upcoming gets a new home: Non-profit side project no more, Upcoming.org is now officially under the Yahoo! domain umbrella with Upcoming.yahoo.com. Old-skoolers, fret not. All your existing friends and settings are saved and we’ll throw in a free shirt to boot (while supplies last, of course). We’ve even done a homepage makeover with popular local events and community picks for best happenings in your hood, combined Yahoo! Local’s events coverage. Read more here.
• Blue shopping cart: See one next to your sponsored search result? If so, it means you can use PayPal Express Checkout as a method of payment with that merchant. Whether you’re buying, selling or trading — making a purchase just got quicker and easier. Want a blue icon on your listing? Go here (if you qualify, there’s no PayPal transaction fees through the end of the year!).

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Jerry Yang and I just announced at our quarterly employee all-hands that Yahoo! has committed to going carbon neutral this year. Essentially, that means we’re going to invest in greenhouse gas reduction projects around the world to neutralize Yahoo!’s impact on the environment. While doing our homework on this, we measured our carbon footprint and discovered that Yahoo! going carbon neutral is equivalent to shutting off the electricity in all San Francisco homes for a month. Or, pulling nearly 25,000 cars off the road for a year.

We’ve been focused on this area for a while now. Our commute alternatives program has been recognized annually by the EPA since 2001 for incentives like Wi-Fi enabled biodiesel shuttles, bike lockers, carpool matching, and sizeable public transit subsidies. Our recycling program keeps about 180,000 pounds of materials out of landfills each year. We use renewable power, hydroelectric energy, and passive cooling at our various facilities and data centers. And green-minded Yahoos have launched sustainability-focused products like the Yahoo! Autos Green Center and 18Seconds.org to show people how they can make a difference in their own lives.

We know carbon neutrality isn’t without controversy. And it’s honestly deserved if companies and individuals don’t first make an effort to find direct ways to reduce their impact. We’ll continue to be vigilant about cutting ours, looking for creative ways to power our facilities, encourage even more employees to seek alternative commutes, and generally inspire Yahoos around the world to think differently about their energy use. (For example, in honor of Earth Day, we’re challenging Yahoos to decrease their consumption by 20% this week to help build lasting habits.) We’ll also be deliberate about investing in offset projects that can verifiably deliver their expected environmental benefits.

We think our offset program counts, but since this is a new and emerging market, we expect to learn as we go, and we’ll be transparent with you along the way. In fact, we’d like your help in all this — we want your inventive and creative ideas for potential offset projects. Please weigh in over at Yahoo! Answers. And read more about our overall approach here.

Stay tuned for more green news from Yahoo! in the near future. And an early Happy Earth Day to you.

David Filo
Chief Yahoo

Photo from razorbern (a.k.a. Bernie DeChant)

What’s been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth, is nearly the size of a Mini Cooper, and may soon go the way of the dodo? If you answered the leatherback turtle, you’re ready for the Great Turtle Race.

While managing this unique project at Yahoo! for the last four months, I’ve become a veritable expert on these amazing creatures. Beginning today, 11 leatherback turtles outfitted with satellite tracking devices will swim from Playa Grande, Costa Rica, to the Galapagos Islands to promote conservation and survival of their kind. This endangered species has declined by 90% in the Pacific over the past 20 years, thanks to various human misdeeds such as gillnet fishing, development, pollution, poaching, and climate change. I’m super excited to spread the word about this cause because these turtles may only have ten years left without our help.

In conjunction with the Leatherback Trust, Conservation International, and Tagging of Pacific Predators, Yahoo! created an interactive site to educate the public on leatherback turtles and conservation and keep everyone up-to-date on the race. Each turtle in the race has a benefactor, ranging from Yahoo! to Travelocity to Plantronics to Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream. I’m quite fond of Yahoo!’s mascot, Purple Lightning, who sports two jet packs and a lightning bolt, but I don’t want to sway your decision on who to root for. Go to the site, research all the leatherbacks, and cheer on your favorite one!

One of the most popular turtles right now is Stephanie Colbertle, in honor of Stephen Colbert, who actually featured her on the “Colbert Report” last week. Here’s a clip of the segment:

It’s not all fun and cartoons. This race will help supply important oceanic data. As the leatherbacks surface to breathe every couple minutes, the satellite tags transmit information on geo-location, water temperature and water depth to satellites in space and then back down to servers in nearly real time. That data is then combined with remotely sensed data about sea surface temperature, height and more to build a more comprehensive understanding of the ocean. Sea turtles are the ocean’s equivalent of canaries in coalmines, and their decline may signal more bad news if we don’t take action.

Check out this video to see how the turtles are outfitted with their satellite vests and to watch exclusive footage of the giant leatherbacks making their nests. Enjoy some amazing photos by nature photographer Jason Bradley. Then tell all your friends, family, and co-workers.

Thanks for reading. Hope you pick the winning turtle!

Randy Ksar
President of the Purple Lightning Fan Club

Get your water guns ready for Thailand’s New Year tradition! And for all you triskaidekaphobiacs, here are some reasons to come out of hiding today:

• Not-so-hot rod?: Before hitting the auto mall plaza, fine-tune your car search with the features and options you want by using Yahoo! Autos’ new beta Car Finder. Want a 2007 hybrid with leather seats and keyless entry? Not only can you get a list of relevant models, you can also get free price quotes from dealers near you, or compare features, pricing, and performance with other cars on the spot. Vinyl suits and Brylcreem not included.
• Web crawlers unite: We’ve talked about our joint efforts with sitemaps.org before, and now the bandwagon is merrier with Ask.com and IBM. We’ve even got another treat for webmasters everywhere. One word: auto-discovery. OK, it’s more like two words, but it provides one pit stop for sharing and submitting your sitemap across Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and now Ask.com search engines. Learn how here.
• WiFi for your hi-fi: Got a Yahoo! ID? Wirelessly access Yahoo! Music’s free LAUNCHcast Internet radio, browse Flickr photos, and see what your friends are listening to on the new WiFi-enabled SanDisk MP3 player. If you’re a Yahoo! Music Unlimited To Go subscriber, you can also discover, stream, or download 2 million tracks (even the ones your friends are listening to). No wires or PC required.
• Cutting a rug: Show us your fancy footwork (be it hip-hop, jive, or ballroom) via video on Bix’s Extra Dance-Off and win $50,000 and a chance to get chummy with Dayna Devon and Mark McGrath on the TV show “Extra.” Pick a song from the contest jukebox, record 60–90 seconds of your best MJ moves, and enter before May 22. You get to vote for the top 10 jigs in round 2, and the final winner in June. No spaghetti-arms, people!

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Few places like a university campus buzz with such contrasts of relentless skepticism and unbridled hope, outward curiosity and elevated self-absorption, elegant theories and gritty realities. Georgetown University, boasting students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries, is a school alive with the energy of student and faculty discourse and scholarship on today’s most vexing international topics.

I felt the energy there earlier this year while leading a discussion on Yahoo! and global values in a graduate seminar on ethics and international business at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. The students asked tough and direct (and not unsurprisingly, diplomatic) questions about Yahoo!’s application of values-based decision-making in our global business operations, showing a sophisticated understanding of technology and human rights issues.

Back on our own buzzing campus, headquarters to a company with hundreds of millions of global users and offices in nearly 25 countries, we too have been actively engaged with issues that arise at the intersection of international human rights and the Internet. I’ve blogged a few times now on Yodel Anecdotal about our involvement in the broad-based dialogue focused on creating a set of global principles and operating procedures regarding freedom of expression and privacy.

Over the past six months, while traveling back and forth to Washington, D.C. for meetings with human rights groups, for rounds on Capitol Hill, and to present at the State Department, I also met with Georgetown leaders to discuss partnership opportunities in the area of technology and global values. And now, as a further step in our engagement on business and human rights issues, we’re announcing a $1 million gift to Georgetown University to establish a Yahoo! International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet Fellowship Fund.

The fund will support the education and research activities of an annual Yahoo! Fellow in Residence and two Junior Yahoo! Fellows who will study the link between international values and Internet and communication technologies. Georgetown will choose the Yahoo! Fellows from candidates in the corporate, government, academic, and civil society sectors with an interest in markets like Brazil, Russia, India, and China. We’ll remain actively involved in the work of the Yahoo! Fellows, partnering with Georgetown in seminars, research, publications, conferences, and other engagements with students, faculty, policy-makers, and the public.

This initiative will complement the Yahoo! International Journalism Fellowship we established last year through a similar gift to Stanford University’s John S. Knight Fellowships program. The Stanford fellowship focuses on journalists from press-restrictive countries, with the first fellow coming from Pakistan and next year’s fellow coming from Zimbabwe. The first Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown will start in the fall of 2007.

Georgetown’s global reach and location in Washington, D.C., its prestigious School of Foreign Service, its reputation for international leadership, and the regular access it provides its students and faculty to legislative, judicial, and executive decision-makers, make it uniquely central in the debate on human rights and technology. We’re excited about the productive possibilities for Internet users globally offered by a Yahoo!-Georgetown partnership.

Michael Samway
VP & Deputy General Counsel

Skip the chocolate bunnies and sugary Peeps — we’ve got a basketful of guilt-free goodies for you this week.

• Map it, print it, make it your own: Before you “print” your next Yahoo! Map directions, add personal notes like useful phone numbers or the names of the clients you’re going to meet. Or click the title bar, “Directions to…,” and change the title to whatever you want (hopefully it’s “Weekend Getaway”). You can also change the font size and switch the map layout to three panels (starting point, end point, and total route) — no more squinting required. As for picking up the directions from the printer tray — well, you’re on your own there!
• Bring your toe-tappin’ boots, too: Studio recording time with Capitol Records and $50,000 are at stake! Whether you’re an aspiring country crooner or just a mic hog, enter your best karaoke performance (from a selection of 700 songs) for the first round of Bix’s Road to Nashville contest. Fifty finalists move on to the next round, and you get to vote to see who makes the cut. Auditioning and voting are free, so just make sure to do your thang by June 26. Stay tuned for the semi-finals, y’all.
• Humble abode: Before you hit the open-house trail, check out Yahoo! Real Estate’s newly redesigned Find a Realtor center to compare top local agents and read up on tips for preparing a home search strategy or closing a transaction. Looking for a steal? Yahoo! Real Estate’s Foreclosure Center lays out everything you ever wanted to know about taking ownership of a home in foreclosure and includes listings, articles, and educational overviews of buying property at auction.
• Extending your circle of friends: Got financial-services pals who use Reuters Messaging? Yahoo! Messenger just rolled out a handshake to let you connect with them in real time. Here’s how. Go to your Yahoo! Messenger Contact list, click the “+” button, and then enter your friend’s email address. Read more here.
• Firefox gets more del.icio.us: Now it’s even easier for you to integrate all of your del.icio.us bookmarks directly into your Firefox web browser. Why so cool? You can now import, share, and search from thousands of bookmarks within Firefox and del.icio.us simultaneously, and you get a brand new sidebar that incorporates sorting and tagging options. Read more here or install it now.

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