New service enables marketers to measure ROI of online campaigns alongside offline programs.

Now that online advertising is forecast to take a bigger slice of advertisers' budgets than ever in the coming year, Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, and Marketing Management Analytics, Inc. (MMA), the marketing analytics pioneer, recently announced a new service that will help marketers improve their return on overall marketing investments by evaluating the offline sales impact of their online marketing programs.

Yahoo Search Marketing’s getting an extreme makeover.
Earlier this year, Yahoo re-branded its online marketing unit. What was once called Overture became Yahoo Search Marketing in a move to more closely identify the group with its corporate parent.

Next step: the unit moved from Pasadena, California, into fancy new offices in Burbank, California, home of Walt Disney and other high-profile media companies. And now, its executives are launching an aggressive assault to regain some ground lost to search leader Google in an area they had once pioneered.

Six Apart, a provider of weblog software, yesterday announced that Yahoo! Web Hosting is now offering its MovableType blogging software, bringing easy installation, speedy performance and full customization to businesses and independent professionals seeking to maintain high-traffic blogs on a scalable and reliable platform.

Under the agreement, Yahoo Web Hosting customers will be able to create blogs using Six Apart's MovableType software.

Yahoo! Inc. a leading global Internet company announced that the company has launched a new version of the leading cross-platform engine for mini desktop applications, Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.0.

Widgets are small, fast-loading applications that live directly on a users' desktop and perform a wide variety of tasks, such as checking for wi-fi presence or strength, finding contacts in an address book, updating a user's calendar, or checking their latest e-mail. These light weight applications are always available, and make it easier for users to directly access the content they care about without launching specific, single-purpose applications or a web browser.

In its latest acquisition of a social networking service, Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc devoured del.icio.us Inc., a startup that enables people to more easily compile and share their favorite content on the Web.

Joshua Schachter, the founder of Del.icio.us, confirmed a posting on the New York-based start-up's site that the company had been acquired by Yahoo. A Yahoo representative confirmed that the agreement to buy Del.icio.us had been closed.

Yahoo looks to raise effectiveness of advertisements by tracking searches and clicks of user.

Yahoo Inc., the world's biggest online advertising supplier, is aiming to fend off challenges from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. by helping corporate marketers use both keyword and brand-based ads, its advertising sales chief said in a statement.

Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, launched Yahoo! Answers beta, a free service where people can ask questions and get answers from real people on any topic.

Yahoo! Answers beta complements Web Search by adding a human element that allows users to ask straightforward questions and receive specific answers based on the collective knowledge and experience of the community. Yahoo! Answers beta is available at http://answers.yahoo.com/.

Yahoo is expanding its reach in the fast-growing Internet calling market, offering a service that will allow people to make and receive low-cost computer calls to and from regular phones.

The long-expected move could make the Sunnyvale company one of the biggest players in the Internet phone-calling market, along with eBay-owned Skype Technologies, Vonage and others.

Called Phone Out and Phone In, the new VoIP services are part of Yahoo Messenger with Voice.