Democracy and the online ad

Posted April 29th, 2007 at 9:23 pm by Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO

 15 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

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

Post a Comment Bookmark This Digg This

15 Comments Add your own

Darren Herman | April 30th, 2007 at 7:29 am

Terry, great acquisition. Strong move…

Steve Morsa | April 30th, 2007 at 7:39 am

Congratulations to all involved.

For a number of reasons; including the ad inventory, expertise, and other resources Yahoo brings; this is a wise and prescient move by both companies; one which can only benefit all online advertising participants.

Though not the same size company as DoubleClick, for the price, Right Media is clearly a much better value and investment.

Along those same lines, another ad platform worth considering, Mr. Semel–paid match–would further enable Yahoo to effectively and efficiently leverage your considerable membership/user and advertiser bases; while, due to its superior targeting and unquestioned relevancy, posing a real and legitimate threat to competitors’ ad platforms.

Right Media…was the right choice.

Alex Funk | April 30th, 2007 at 11:07 am

Congrats, Right Media embodies the “democratized internet” ideals of today’s web, for the realm of advertisers and publishing networks. Looking forward to continued growth in that area as time goes on!

Steven | April 30th, 2007 at 11:58 am

Terry, we have complete faith in your leadership. Please stay at Yahoo at least 5 more years.

j-dilla | April 30th, 2007 at 9:57 pm

boy, the first 20% seems cheap compared to the last 80.

Steve Vigouroux | May 1st, 2007 at 1:05 pm

Congrats to all……
I’m a small publisher(5000 visitors/day, 20,000 ad views).
Can anyone explain to me how/when this will help my CTR (%) that is stuck at roughly 0.3%, due mostly to a redundant showing of the same ads.

Will my ads finally be shown internationaly?

Thanks/ Steve

Bob | May 1st, 2007 at 10:32 pm

Now that I’ve got Yahoo! and Right Media in the same room, perhaps it would be a good time to suggest that ending all advertising for malware might be the right thing to do.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/hostsnews/archive/2007/05/01/yahoo-to-acquire-right-media.aspx

Thank you.

D. Ferguson | May 3rd, 2007 at 5:12 am

For the future of Yahoo, There will be more adverts in the blogs, more adverts in Flickr and so forth. Yahoo will end up more adverts than anything else (if the above is anything to go by).

So what is really in it for the customer, Hmmm lets see?
Well we could have a little space - which would probably end up with a pop-up over it every time you logged on, no doubt.

If you complain about the pop-up, Yahoo would find a way of saying it was a “violation”. After all there policing of the blogs etc., is terrible. Oh Unless you want to see porn.

Sad, but very true.

Regards,
Dave

RS | May 4th, 2007 at 12:41 am

Is this connected to the new absurd idea to begin sending ads to users who pay for e-mail access through Yahoo/AT&T? What if I want NO ADS AT ALL?
If I want to be marketed to, I’ll seek it out, not have it dropped on me. What about my democratic power to check the ‘none of the above’ box?

RS | May 4th, 2007 at 1:07 am

Bob, that’s an awsome link.

Terry, I’m a paying Yahoo/AT&T customer, but if I get one ad in my e-mail for malware, I’m not only switching internet services, I’m switching phone companies too! I’ll want to get so far from Yahoo as to not give them one penny ever again. If forcing your paying customers to get bombarded with ads (especially ads for malware) is what you mean by

“continue to transform how advertisers and publishers connect to their audiences.”

(and I have no reason to believe otherwise) then I am pretty peeved. If your idea is to force their ads down our throats all over your pages and bombard paying customers with mismatched ads that they don’t want, well sure, that is a transformation alright. Not much new about that though.

“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. ”

I notice precious little here about concern for the user, or the impact on them. A small oversight, perhaps? Marketing models tend towards failure when your audience isn’t considered in the equation.

Good luck with snagging ad dollars at the expense of your user’s dollars. Do blog about how that works for you. Cheers.

RS | May 4th, 2007 at 10:46 am

OK, so after a bit of searching around, I was able to get a number for AT&T Yahoo, and found out more actual info about the incorporation of ads into the “mail experience”. It seems this won’t be e-mails, but graphics on the right hand side of the page. Thought I should correct myself on your wonderous blog almighty.

I have informed customer service I will most likely be switching my services not only away from Yahoo/AT&T for internet, but AT&T for phone as well. I can get better, faster service for equal price elsewhere it turns out. If they aren’t using ads in their service, I will have a new home. It is strictly because of the decision to place ads in my paid service.

Dan Lewis | May 5th, 2007 at 11:30 pm

smoke, mirrors, desperation?
msft, please take this over.

Carl DiLorenzo | May 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 pm

Can anyone suggest a good email service without ads that cover 1/3 of your mail page? After many, many years of paying YAHOO for email service I am though with them. The exec who made the decision to go in that direction has scored the highest number of points in the “How to p-ss off your customers” program.

Floyd | June 23rd, 2007 at 11:28 pm

I switched all my activity to gmail. Like a breath of fresh air. I’ve lost 90% of my confidence in Yahoo, I expect to be at 100% when they roll out the beta for Yahoo Groups. Haven’t seen it, but everything else has been extremely user-alienating.
The ads are unobtrusively placed on the message page, text only. Very nice. Easy to use.

ersin | May 7th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

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.