The announcement was made today onstage at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New YorkPresident Clinton recognized Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, along with Alan H. Fleischmann, managing director and co-founder, ImagineNations, during the general plenary session this morning.

ImagineNations Network is a global technology platform with a focus on emerging markets that enables young entrepreneurs to connect at the local and global level to peers, mentors and resources to help them build businesses and livelihoods around the world.

Yahoo! will be using the power of its global reach to promote the ImagineNations Network through targeted media on its advertising platform.  With more than 600 million unique visitors per month and a platform that reaches half of the world’s online population, Yahoo! will use the power of its science, art and scale to help promote ImagineNations Network’s efforts in various regions across the globe.

ImagineNations Network has already gathered the commitment of several thousand mentors from across the world and Yahoo!’s advertising efforts will help match them with local entrepreneurs.

The announcement today follows on from the Social Innovation Starts with You! initiative that we announced earlier this year with Egyptian nonprofit, Nahdet El Mahrousa (NM). It also follows Jerry Yang’s keynote speech at the White House’s Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.

“You’re doing what?” “With whom?” “Wait, is that the chocolate drink company?”

Today more than 15 years later, I’m proud to announce my graduation from Yahoo! employee to Yahoo! user. No blog post can capture the density of this experience, the richness of what I’ve learned, and the profound gratitude I’ll always have — for David and Jerry taking that leap of faith in me, and for the thousands of Yahoo! employees who have made this a place where magic happens. And above all, nothing I write can convey how humbled and inspired I’ve been by the hundreds of millions of you who share your time, extend your trust, and make Yahoo! a part of your lives. I’m glad to count myself among you.

When we started, Yahoo! was a directory of websites. We couldn’t wait to see the amazing things people would do when they discovered the Web. We pioneered a new profession: Web Surfer. Categorizing sites of every stripe was hardly a perfunctory exercise; we understood that the sum total of our myriad, minute choices — what we include, what we call things, where we put things, how we describe things — reveals a point of view. The mere act of aggregation is creation; aggregation has a voice. In our aim to be a helpful guide to the Web, we confronted the politics of classification, and how it can illuminate human conflict.

In embarking on the task of bringing order to so much information, we established foundational principles for the voice of Yahoo!, which are as relevant today as they were when the Web was new: Be simple, clear, direct. Be useful, inclusive, and provide context, not judgment.

This has never been about us or the technology, but about helping people tap into the transformative power of this medium. It’s about what interests you, what entertains you, what informs you, what helps you express yourself. It’s about what connects you to other people, what connects you to something bigger — and ultimately, what inspires you to recognize and expand your own creative capacity to make the world a better place.

We spend every day in service to those goals. I’ve stayed at Yahoo! with an abiding passion to embed those core values in our work. I leave with the satisfaction of knowing they’re firmly established in our DNA.

As I turn in my employee badge, I’ll be devoting more time to my longstanding love for jazz. I chair the board of SFJAZZ, a nonprofit in San Francisco in the midst of an exciting phase of growth. On the opposite side of the country, my partner Josh and I are developing a performance and production center for creative music in Brooklyn. At Yahoo! I’ve witnessed the kinds of circumstances that give rise to great creativity, and I find the same holds true in music: bringing together diverse perspectives in a collaborative spirit, allowing each voice individual expression in service to the collective whole, striking just the right balance between structure and freedom, being mindful and respectful of the past but relentlessly looking forward to what’s next.

With deepest respect and thanks for the past, I’m looking forward to what’s next.

-Srinija Srinivasan, aka Ninj
from Ontological Yahoo to Vice President, Editor in Chief

Earlier this week, Yahoo! participated in the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.  The conference brought together web innovators, thought-leaders and executives to talk about the constantly changing web and how to turn this “disruption” into opportunity.  Even our fearless leader, Carol Bartz, spoke in a fireside with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

Most fascinating was the Startup Battlefield, where 20 new companies competed in front of influential judges over the course of three intense days for the chance to win $50,000. Yahoo!’s Chief Architect, Raymie Stata, was on the judging panel. While there were many interesting start ups, it was art.sy, a place to discover and share fine art online, which deserves the Yahoo! Rookie Award!

Yahoo! is a company that was started fifteen years ago by two rookies, Jerry and Dave, who created Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle during their graduate days at Stanford.  They were two people who saw a need, jumped in and created something that worked for an ever growing group of people. Today, Yahoo! is a multi-billion dollar media company that uses technology to push the boundaries of the digital landscape, creating captivating experiences, content and programming.  We support innovators with big ideas and determination; we’ve been there!

During TechCrunch Disrupt we wanted to find a startup that showed promise to succeed where others have tried and failed.   This industry is about success and yes, failure.  Creating technologies and products that allow people to do things they didn’t know they wanted to do and to do things online that they traditionally did offline – like buying fine art.

We believe the marrying of online and offline behavior is one huge area for disruption. Carter Cleveland, founder of art.sy, has demonstrated a passion and a purpose for his startup.  It’s evident that he has passion for art, as does everyone on his team, and the product they’ve created demonstrates a new approach to tap into an industry that has traditionally resisted disruption AND that shows great promise to marry online and offline behavior.

Congratulations to Carter and the art.sy team who received the Yahoo! Rookie Disrupter Award and the opportunity to exhibit at the next TechCrunch event in San Francisco. Disrupt away!

I had the privilege today to speak at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.

I ultimately consider myself an entrepreneur – from the time David Filo and I started Yahoo! in a small campus trailer parked at Stanford, and even more so today. David and I had a dream fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit and a love for technology.

The gathering of delegates at the Summit represents an appreciation for the critical role entrepreneurs play in advancing the global community. The Summit follows the President’s commitment during his June 2009 speech in Cairo, and is an effort to join existing efforts and inspire new efforts to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, with a focus on Muslim-majority countries and Muslim communities around the world.

Many renowned experts in the U.S. and globally are speaking, and President Obama addresses the group this evening.

I spent most of my talk discussing what it takes for regions, countries and societies to create a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment – one that is ripe for technology entrepreneurs.  Later today, I will share a link to view my speech.

While entrepreneurship may be an individual’s pursuit, a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment where technology entrepreneurs can thrive doesn’t happen by accident.

You need to have the right foundation to enable entrepreneurship to flourish.   A foundation that includes: a commitment to research and development; investment in education (including fundamental science at the University level); access to capital funding; and a culture that encourages an entrepreneur ecosystem – from immigration and technology access to online communities and mentors who encourage our youth.

Over the years, the U.S. has addressed much of the foundational elements of high-growth entrepreneurship, and as a result, we see a steady stream of entrepreneurs, technology innovation and economic opportunities.

Let me share two powerful stats.

· According to the Kauffman Foundation, between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old or less. That is about 40 million jobs.

· In 2008, research from the National Venture Capital Association showed that VC backed companies in the U.S. employed 12.1 million people generating $3 trillion in revenue.  This represents the equivalent of 21% of the U.S. GDP.

But the power of the Internet, innovation and ideas, and entrepreneurship is borderless.  People around the world, especially young people, are increasingly enthusiastic about chasing new opportunities and starting their own businesses.

And for any entrepreneur, whether they’re in Cairo, Egypt or Cairo, Illinois, or India or Indonesia, the challenge becomes building the bridge and foundations that will enables high-growth entrepreneurship and technology to flourish.

The Middle East shows signs of a growing number of budding entrepreneurs.

The Silatech Index: Voice of Young Arabs study conducted with Gallup in June 2009 found that the majority of Arab youth surveyed believe entrepreneurship is the key to future job creation in the region.  Underscoring that fact was the fact that 26 percent of the young Arabs surveyed in the region were planning to start their own business within the next 12 months.

From my perspective, what is particularly encouraging about these results is how they highlight an emerging willingness to consider new approaches and pursue new ideas.

Let me share an example. The founders of Maktoob.com, a company Yahoo! acquired last year, pursued a new idea 10 years ago.  Co-founders Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury noticed there were few online services that offered content in Arabic, their native language.  In their spare time, they began to work on an email service that would support Arabic, later adding others online content services.

They were fortunate to have education, mentors (including Fadi Ghandour, a successful CEO/entrepreneur in the Middle East) and funding, which would help make this dream possible.  Samih and Hussam ultimately created the world’s largest Arab online community.  Today, with more than 19 million users in the Middle East region, Yahoo! Maktoob is committed to increasing Arabic content and helping youth and entrepreneurs in the region.

Just last week, Yahoo! Maktoob, in partnership with NGO Nahdet El Mahrousa, launched a social entrepreneurship campaign in Egypt called, “Social Innovation Starts with YOU!”.  Individuals from across Egypt will be invited to become the next social entrepreneurs of the year by developing new ideas in the fields of education, health and the environment.  Ten winners will receive monetary grants and technical and management support for three years to help bring their ideas to life.

Samih and Hussan’s journey highlights what is possible for today’s entrepreneurs.  There are plenty of other examples of successful entrepreneurs in emerging markets, and opportunities for others with a desire to create future companies or ideas  – in mobile technology, software, clean technologies, biotech or social networking, to name but a few.

In this “flat world”, there is a tremendous opportunity for countries around the globe to participate in high-growth entrepreneurship and further technology advancements. It is critical for everyone – public officials, private industry, NGOs, educational institutions, entrepreneurs and others – to help build a foundation to help support this.

Collectively, we can make an impact, and help ensure entrepreneurship and technology continues its remarkable progress in emerging economies and around the world … so that future generations will see their dreams come to life.

Jerry Yang
Co-founder, Yahoo!

We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world, and will continue to focus on the values that brought us here —working hard, having fun, being passionate about your ideas, believing in each other, and always trying to invent the future.  And as we celebrate 15 years today, we are even more excited than ever about what lies ahead, and the potential of Yahoo! and the Internet.

Of course, we didn’t set out to start one of the world’s largest Internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world. We were just a couple of Stanford graduate students doing our research (supposedly) while our professor was on sabbatical.

More interesting than our research was our total fascination with the web and all the cool stuff it suddenly made available. But it was incredibly hard to keep track of the thousands of great websites sprouting up everywhere.  We thought it would be fun to catalog the sites by developing a simple directory. So all this began with nothing more than a hobby to help other early Internet users.

Amazing things happen when we’re doing what’s fun.

We soon learned a huge lesson just as relevant today as then: change and growth on the Internet happen at warp speed—especially if you’re filling a need. With the proliferation of websites and with hundreds of thousands of people accessing our guide, it was simply impossible for us to continue doing this on our own.

Taking big steps takes belief in yourself—and in others.

After many late nights and a lot of pizza, we decided to take the big leap, turn our hobby into a business, raise money and devote ourselves totally to building a company.  This was no sure thing.  For example, 15 years ago, we wanted a free service that was ad-supported. But the conventional wisdom was that our business needed to be subscription-based. Few people thought that advertising could be the key revenue generator for the Internet. Of course, the conventional wisdom was wrong and so today we know that August, 1995, the month our first ad went live, was a critical milestone in the history of Yahoo!, as well as the history of the internet.

Focus on the future: it still looks phenomenal.

Internet growth continues to be simply phenomenal, and we’re nowhere near done.  Fifteen years ago, there were 18,000 web sites and fewer than 10 million people globally on the Internet—less than one third of a single percent of the world’s population at the time. Today there are more than 200 million websites with 90,000 created daily. There are estimated to be 1.6 billion people on the internet today—about 25 percent of the world’s population.

These numbers are astonishing, but even more important and more exciting is the impact that the Internet is having on so many people around the world.  From socio-economic opportunities to more accessible health care to educating the next generation and beyond, the Internet has changed the way we live, work and learn.  It has overcome geographic and political barriers and has made it possible for people to raise their voices as they seek greater economic opportunity and freedom.  And Yahoo! has been a leader in enabling these tremendous technological advancements every step of the way.

Let’s aim to be even prouder fifteen years from now than we are today!

All this in just 15 years. Yahoo! has been built by thousands of dedicated employees, hundreds of millions of loyal users and scores of advertisers who envisioned a future that was exciting, challenging and at times daunting.  To work in the sandbox that is Yahoo! and the evolution of the Internet is truly amazing.

And yet as fast as the Internet and Yahoo! have grown and as remarkably our lives have changed, we are just at the beginning of this great transformation.

The Internet still has enormous and untapped potential.  There are billions of more people we need to drive online, and then provide them with relevant content and opportunities that they’ve never dreamed about before.

We are confident that 15 years from today, we will look back in marvel  at how far you, and the Internet have traveled in such a short time. Just as we are doing today.

Jerry Yang and David Filo

Co-Founders & Chief Yahoos

This Sunday, at the Internet Governance Forum’s annual meeting, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang delivered a keynote address to discuss the impact of the Internet on people’s lives, the need to get the next billion people online and the importance of providing those next billion–in emerging markets and beyond–with locally relevant content and communications tools.

“The Internet isn’t just about getting as many people online as possible,” said Jerry Yang. “But making sure that once they’re online, they have something productive to do, something to gain, something meaningful to experience.”

The IGF meeting took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and you can watch the full opening session and keynotes here.  Jerry’s speech starts at about 59 minutes into the opening session, directly after Tim Berners-Lee.

In addition to the IGF keynote, Jerry is meeting with customers, employees and both local and U.S. government officials while in the region.

Yahoo! recently closed the acquisition of Maktoob, the largest Arabic-language Internet site.  According to the World Bank, there are more than 320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, while less than one per cent of all online content is in Arabic.  The partnership between Maktoob and Yahoo! aims to strengthen and support Arabic content on the Internet, adapting current products to the Arabic language while also working with local developers to create new and compelling products.

Breathing inspiration into anxiety-ridden and debt-addled college graduates in the worst economy since World War II is a tall order. But Jerry reminded them of the resilient human spirit and that great things often crawl from the wreckage in the worst of times. After all, he and David Filo created Yahoo! in a downturn in the early 90s. Jerry proffered six bits of advice — ranging from not letting the headlines get the grads down to taking advantage of the incredible tools (e.g. the Internet) at their disposal to being ready to take strange roads that might not be in their master plan.

You can read the full transcript here. Or enjoy the video (Part I, Part II), courtesy of BigIslandVideoNews.com.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Ever since founding Yahoo! with David Filo 13 years ago, I’ve been passionate about this company, its brand, its employees, and the millions of people around the world who consider it their online home. That’s why I accepted the Board’s request to become CEO in June 2007, taking on the challenge of transforming Yahoo! at a time when the industry was evolving quickly and we needed to rethink and restructure our business.

And despite the tough external environment that we face, I truly believe we’ve made tangible progress in bringing our strategic vision to life. Most significantly, we’ve rewired our entire network to create a Yahoo! that has opened its doors to outside publishers and developers. We’ve launched an advertising platform that we think will transform how ads are bought and sold online. And we’ve continued to grow our audience –- standing first or second in more than 20 product categories and demonstrating that Yahoo! is the place users turn for major events like the Olympics and the Elections.

And now I believe the time is right for us to bring in a new leader –- someone who will build on the important pillars we’ve put in place and who will take the reins on the critical decisions our company faces. As for me, I’ll be returning to my role as Chief Yahoo and board member once my successor is named. I’ll go back to focusing on our global strategy, product excellence, technology innovation, and working with the Board and our executive team to help Yahoo! realize its full potential.

It’s been an extraordinary year here at Yahoo! –- for all of us. I’m really proud of the determination and resilience of Yahoos around the world who are so committed to giving you the best Internet experience possible. It is for them, and for you, that I will always bleed purple.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

Quick recap: For the second year in a row, Yahoo! has offered a grand prize for the blogger who mobilized the most readers to donate to DonorsChoose, the charity that lets you directly fulfill wishlists for public school teachers. Last year, Jerry offered to take the champion to lunch. This year, we upped the ante and also threw in a field trip for the victorious blogger’s favorite school, worth up to $5,000.

Tomato Nation mobilized 1,162 donors, raising $111,352 and reaching 19,577 kids. She blew away the competition, showing just how powerful blog microcosms can be — especially in the midst of an it-might-be-or-it-might-not-be-no-one-wants-to-call-it-a-recession. In addition to exceeding her own personal goal of $100,000 (for which she promised to tour our nation’s capitol in said bulbous red costume), Bunting is likely now agonizing over which public school will be enjoying Yahoo!’s field trip bonanza.

Let me leave you with these inspiring words from Tomato Nation, explaining just what kind of difference it all made to public school kiddos:

It’s not about the crayons or the turtles or the overhead projectors; they need those things, but mostly they need to know people give a damn. At least a little suck into every life must fall, but the worst part of any suck is thinking that no one cares, that you’ll have to live with it on your own. One of the sweetest phrases in English, after “I love you” and “open bar,” is “damn, that does suck,” coupled with a pat on the shoulder. It lets you keep going.

That did suck. Now it doesn’t. Y’all gave six figures of damn… [sic] so that enough kids to repopulate my entire hometown could get supplies they needed, and would not lose hope.

We can’t wait to host our favorite tomato to lunch here in Sunnyvale. Jerry’s napkin is all tucked in.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo from abchao

Don, aka Jon Hamm, joined me, President Sue Decker, and our US Region Head Hilary Schneider on stage at Advertising Week in NYC today to help unveil APT from Yahoo!, our new advertising platform (which was formerly known as AMP from Yahoo! or Project Apex). Jon helped us put our platform in context with the evolution of advertising over the last 40 years – from the time when the advertiser was the indisputable king, to today, when the consumer is clearly in charge.

I started dreaming about this day 18 months ago, when I laid out my vision for our board of directors on how Yahoo! could play a unique role in changing the face of online advertising. In fact, Sue and I called it Nirvana at the time – a platform that would be to 2009 what radio was to 1924, TV to 1947, color TV to 1965, and the Internet to 1993.

Sounds like hype, right? We don’t think so. As Sue posted in April, we listened to all of the pain points that our partners shared about the process of buying and selling ads. Would you believe it takes more than 30 manual operational steps to move from ad strategy concept to launching that ad? It involves faxes (!!) and sometimes weeks in proposal processing. Audiences are now distributed across a sea of web sites and are harder to find, understand, and put a value on. Madison Avenue might think it’s a shame Johnny Walker Red doesn’t flow at the office anymore.

APT looks to change all that. It’s simple. It’s open. It’s fast (like minutes vs. days). It provides a new level of control. It offers cross-selling more easily than ever been before. It will provide large amounts of quality inventory. It will help advertisers customize and target their messages more precisely through advanced targeting. And it will drive results. All this from a single online application. No more cobbled together processes or impressions. No more wasted time.

Our confidence in APT’s ability to transform the marketplace isn’t based on theory or conjecture. It’s because of the feedback we’ve been hearing from partners who have been working with us side-by-side as we developed and then began testing the platform. In fact, William Dean Singleton, CEO of Media News Group (parent company of the San Jose Mercury News), also joined us on stage today, using words like “extraordinary and “sea-change” to describe how APT will take MNG into the future.

APT is real today and we’re starting to roll it out to our Newspaper Consortium members, which will continue for the remainder of this year and into the next. They’ll be followed by other publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad networks beginning in 2009.

If only Sterling Cooper could be here to reap the benefits.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

What do you do if you’re the CEO and president of a company that’s become the preoccupation of the business section and you’re about to go on stage in front of hundreds of tech moguls, investors, and journalists at “D: All Things Digital” for a chat with the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg? You cue the video!

Here’s a short video prelude we pulled together for Jerry Yang and Sue Decker to help pull the elephant squarely into the middle of the room this afternoon at the 6th annual D conference in Carlsbad, Calif. It’s a parody of the vast quantities of advice that both execs have been receiving about Yahoo! in recent months. And we got a little help from our friends — Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz (our first investor), PBS’ Charlie Rose, Sony’s Howard Stringer, Intel’s Paul Otellini, Dell’s Michael Dell, Cisco’s John Chambers, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

For Yodel Anecdotal readers, we’re posting a special version with an exclusive Buffett outtake at the end. It’s clear why Warren was invited to cameo on “All My Children.”

Yahoo! will be filing a definitive proxy statement and accompanying WHITE proxy card with the SEC in connection with the solicitation of proxies for its 2008 annual meeting of stockholders. Stockholders are strongly advised to read Yahoo!’s 2008 definitive proxy statement when it becomes available because it will contain important information. Stockholders will be able to obtain copies of Yahoo!’s 2008 definitive proxy statement and other documents filed by Yahoo! with the SEC in connection with its 2008 annual meeting of stockholders at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or at the Investor Relations section of Yahoo!’s website at yhoo.client.shareholder.com. Yahoo!, its directors, and certain of its officers may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders in connection with Yahoo!’s 2008 annual meeting of stockholders. Information concerning Yahoo!’s directors and officers is available in its preliminary proxy statement filed with the SEC on May 22, 2008.

(Incidentally, this video is the dog that ate my homework and is the reason why you loyal readers found last week’s content a bit sparse. I’m a multi-hat operation.)

Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com

On Tuesday, I watched Jerry Yang and his wife Akiko Yamazaki speak in the sunny main atrium of the Yang and Yamazaki Energy and Environment Center at Stanford University. The newly dedicated building will house scholars whose mission is to solve difficult environmental problems. Jerry and Akiko contributed $50 million toward the construction of this state-of-the-art, day lit building that represents the cutting edge of sustainable design. Made with recycled steel and other green materials, the building will use an estimated 56% less energy and 90% less water than comparable non-green buildings.

The building also encourages collaboration, an especially critical feature when you consider the diverse disciplines it will require to tackle problems such as climate change and growing water shortages. People are more likely to write papers or conduct research together if they regularly bump into one other in the hallway. The open floor plans at Yahoo! are based on the same principle of open communication. Jerry and Aikiko’s building brings professors from a staggering range of departments together with students in a building that is green, beautiful and invites interaction and cross-pollination.

Y2E2 reflects green design at the most thoughtful level: low impact in its initial construction and ongoing operations; consideration for the health and productivity of the students and faculty who will spend their time within its walls; and a place that will encourage playful, unconventional, creative thinking that is the hallmark of Silicon Valley at its best. It’s also exactly the sort of living and thinking that that has to happen in order to solve some of the planet’s most pressing challenges.

Standing in the building’s atrium that evening, surrounded by a cross-section of scholars, business people, students, and other greenies, I was reminded why Yahoo! is so committed to the environment and energy efficiency. The guy at the top obviously cares quite a bit about this stuff, too.

Here’s a video of the dedication.

Chris Page
Director of Climate and Energy Strategy

The challenge is that advertisers and publishers are forced to deal with disparate systems and multiple platforms for buying search, display, video, and local ads. That in itself is an inhibitor to achieving that growth. And we’re trying to solve these headaches by taking a different approach.

As the largest publisher on the Web that also leads in display advertising, and holds a strong number two in search, we maintain one of the world’s largest advertising networks and operate the Right Media Exchange. We’re truly in the best position to understand the evolving needs and demands of the entire ecosystem.

And at Yahoo!, our goal is simple. We want to eliminate all the friction and complexity that advertisers, publishers, agencies, and exchanges deal with so they can focus on reaching the right audiences and driving greater monetization.

We’re building a cutting-edge platform that simplifies the process for advertisers when buying targeted, guaranteed and non-guaranteed advertising inventory across Yahoo!’s owned and operated network, partner sites, and other advertising networks. And furthermore, this new platform will be a web-based, hosted application that harnesses the power of collaboration across the Internet.

Our approach is as different to current advertising platforms as the DVR was to VCRs. We believe this to be a real game-changer.

The new platform will enable all participants in the ecosystem to benefit:

• Publishers will be able to better serve their advertisers’ needs by making it easy for publishers to sell, package, and distribute other publishers’ inventory alongside their own, giving advertisers extended reach to audiences across the Web through a centralized platform.
• Advertisers will be able to spend more time on driving revenue and developing compelling creative for their audiences, rather than dealing with the complexities of ad generation, assembly, trafficking, and serving ads.
• Advertising agencies will be able to streamline the buying process for multiple accounts across multiple publishers and allow for creative testing and campaign optimization, even as the campaign evolves.
• And last but not least Advertising Networks will benefit from having a platform that connects publishers to the best advertisers for their site and audience, and advertisers to the best publishers with the most relevant audiences, thereby increasing both their reach in the process.

We previewed this new platform for our partners in the Newspaper Consortium a couple of weeks ago, and were so pleased with their response that we decided to give the attendees at the IAB Annual Meeting a glimpse so they could share in our excitement. And since most of you weren’t there this morning, I wanted to tell you about the great stuff we’re working on at Yahoo!, so that you can get fired up with us as we set out to revolutionize the online advertising market once again.

Sue Decker
President

Photo from DougGoodman.com.

It’s the eve of the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show, the country’s largest annual tradeshow, for which nearly 150,000 people will cram into the Las Vegas Convention Center to be among the first to fiddle with the latest and greatest new gadgets and technology on the planet. And Yahoo! will be there in force.

CEO and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang will keynote the show’s Industry Insiders Series tomorrow at 11:00am Pacific (I’ll update this post with a link to the live webcast. Live webcast options: high, medium, low. The archive should be available by 1:00pm Pacific.) and we have speakers representing social networking, advertising, Flickr, and Yahoo! Music. Our booth is not to be missed, nor are the vittles we’ll be handing out. And on Wednesday, the experts from Yahoo! Tech will host the Last Gadget Standing, a head-to-head battle for the 2008 doohickey that reigns supreme (we’ll post about it).

Check back tomorrow to catch Jerry’s keynote, get a recap of the first day, and check out photos of the action.

Oh, and happy new year, y’all.

UPDATE: The archive of Jerry’s keynote is available here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Past gifts have included free coffee for all (a tradition I cash in on every morning), a purple sleeping bag (presumably to get more work out of us), a purple gym bag (to offset all that work), an MP3 player (I think it fit 20 songs, but it was so newfangled back in 2001), a Yahoo!opoly game (a clever adaptation of the Milton Bradley favorite, complete with awesomely relevant metal game pieces), more jackets (they’re clearly a crowd-pleaser), and a $100 charity gift certificate (a favorite for many).

Over the last week, Jerry and David (and their many elves) personally helped employees zip up into their new duds. We threw together this little video of the handout process to get everyone into the holiday spirit. And notice the intrigue surrounding the “bonus” gift that came along with the jackets.

We’ll be home watching our video yule log next week, as I’m sure will you, so let me take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for continuing to read, comment, and repeat. Here’s to a yodelful 2008!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor