Yahoo to transform Web ads with new system - Yang

By Yinka Adegoke

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc's chief executive said his company's new system will make Internet advertising cheaper and easier for publishers and advertisers.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang told Reuters in an interview that publishers and advertisers would benefit from a more efficient process that would allow them to sell their products and services on more than one website at a time.

Yang said the system, called APT, would be much simpler than the current process of selling banner ads through hundreds of websites --a time-consuming model with roots in traditional media like television and newspaper advertising.

"This system allows cross-selling between sales forces, it allows us to have visibility of what pricing is happening and where," said Yang, who added the system could transform the online Web industry's inefficiencies in selling ads.

Yahoo is hoping to build a system as efficient for online display advertising as the one run by Google Inc in search advertising. Google's market-leading search advertising sales system is largely automated via an auction bidding process.

The U.S. Justice Department is currently looking into whether a commercial tie-up between Google and Yahoo, which together have 80 percent of the search market, would violate anti-trust law.

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