Internet search titan Yahoo announced a deal to buy video advertising specialty company AdInterax.
Yahoo, the California-based Internet search engine, is investing in Right Media Exchange and buying AdInterax, an online ad publisher.
Yahoo said AdInterax’s technology would be offered in conjunction with its own online ad tools for behavioral targeting, geo-targeting and demo-targeting. AdInterax’s software tools enable advertising agencies and publishers to create, manage, serve and measure online advertising.
Yahoo bolstered its ad services by acquiring AdInterax and buying one-fifth of Right Media. AdInterax is an online ad publisher. Right Media lets the search engine offer advertisers the ability to bid on Yahoo’s non-premium inventory through an open and transparent marketplace.
The Right Media Exchange includes more than 11,000 buyers and sellers. Yahoo gets a seat on Right Media’s board as part of its investment.
Yahoo’s acquisition of AdInterax came as Yahoo courted youth social networking website FaceBook and the battle among Internet search engines for online devotees became increasingly focused on video offerings.
Google touted video sharing as the future of the Internet when the online search juggernaut recently revealed a 1.65-billion-dollar stock deal to buy hot young website YouTube.
AdInterax is being bought by Yahoo so it can "provide advanced rich media creative assembly and campaign management tools directly to marketers at no charge as part of Yahoo’s graphical advertising offerings," Yahoo said in a statement.
AdInterax’s design module streamlines the technical processes for making “rich media” ad formats, including floating animations, expandable banners and streaming video. Its’ tracking and reporting module tracks traditional metrics, including impressions, clicks, and reach and frequency, in addition to other branding and direct marketing data.
“Creativity in advertising is critical to the further adoption of the Internet as a marketing medium,” Yahoo vice president Greg Coleman said in a release.
Display advertising, which can include sound, animation, video or just pictures, accounted for 31 percent of the $7.9 billion in online advertising sold in the first half of the year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Text advertising accompanying search results accounted for 40 percent of ad sales. The remainder included classified ads, referrals/lead generation and email.
Yahoo outlined plans to use AdInterax in a "self-serve" platform to enable advertisers to tailor and target messages online.
“We look forward to joining the Yahoo family,” said AdInterax chief executive Peter Matsuo. We believe the addition of AdInterax’s tools and technology into Yahoo’s services will create compelling offerings for marketers and publishers, he added.
The costs of the two investments were not disclosed. The Sunnyvale, California, search engine said AdInterax would be a tool to help its advertisers "use sight, sound and motion to deliver a message."
Yahoo said the AdInterax tools would be available at no charge, along with the portal’s own services for advertisers.