Yahoo and the WPP Group have announced a multiyear strategic partnership, designed to give group agencies WPP Digital, GroupM and 24/7 Real Media the ability to more efficiently buy digital display advertising across the Internet.
“This partnership will allow WPP to provide marketers with dramatically increased precision and flexibility in targeting ads to the right audiences, resulting in more efficient campaigns, less waste and increased ROI,” said Mike Walrath, SVP of the advertising marketplaces group for Yahoo, in an e-mail.
The partnership, in the works for some time, is open-ended, according to Rob Norman, CEO of GroupM Interaction.
Working through 24/7 Real Media, WPP plans to develop its own media trading platform which will connect to the Right Media Exchange, Yahoo’s platform for digital advertising. There are also plans to develop a “WPP marketplace,” which will include inventory from Yahoo-owned and -affiliated networks, and 24/7 Real Media’s Global Web Alliance. This marketplace would be open to third-party publishers.
In other Yahoo news, following Microsoft’s failed bid for the company, Carl Icahn has announced his intention to nominate 10 people to Yahoo’s board of directors. Board chairman Roy Bostock responded that the investor’s correspondence with the company “reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal.”
