Yahoo Unveils Details of New AMP Advertising Platform

In the midst of firmly responding to Microsoft’s ultimatum, Yahoo has released details of the new AMP advertising platform, designed to streamline and automate online advertising across a variety of target markets, publishers and ad type. The platform will feature an open API and will also include Yahoo! owned-and-operated inventory and more than 600 U.S. newspapers in the Newspaper Consortium.

Some of the newspapers have already been given access to the platform. Jay Smith, President, Cox Newspapers said, “We are highly enthusiastic about the potential of this platform. We’re blown away by how Yahoo! is working with intensity and commitment to create a collaborative and very efficient platform that we expect will have a significant impact on our sales capabilities. This is a turning point for our industry.”

This is exactly what Yahoo was hoping to hear. Hilary Schneider, EVP, Global Partner Solutions, Yahoo! said, “AMP! from Yahoo will enable advertisers and publishers to connect with each other and their exact target audiences across the increasingly fragmented Internet, in a way that’s not possible with current solutions. We believe AMP! will deliver a faster, easier, and more automated and integrated way to create, buy, and sell advertising and do so across a transparent global marketplace.”

AMP is still a few months away from being released to the general public. The company expects to go live with the new platform in the third quarter of this year.

The releasing of details about AMP came in the wake of pressure from Microsoft for Yahoo to agree to their unsolicited bid for the company at $31 a share. Yahoo has until April 26th to agree to that price. With the recent positive forecast for the next 3 years of revenues and today’s announcement about AMP, Yahoo appears to be pulling out all the stops for either a better bid or more confidence from analysts about the future of the Sunnyvale search engine.