Yahoo Inc. released more details about its forthcoming advertising management platform aimed at allowing advertisers and newspapers to buy and sell space online (see related story, page 49).

The platform, dubbed AMP, will roll out in phases during the third quarter of this year, Yahoo said.

AMP, formerly known as Project Apex, will allow marketers to search for available advertising inventory through a single, integrated interface, Yahoo said. Companies can buy across search, display, local, mobile or video inventory, Yahoo said.

 

Newspaper Consortium members said they’re eagerly anticipating the release of the platform.

“We are highly enthusiastic about the potential of this platform,” said Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers. “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.”

Yahoo plans to extend the functionality of the platform as well as adding additional publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad networks through the rest of this year and into 2009.

A video demonstration of AMP can be viewed at http://advertising.yahoo.com/amp.

Yahoo adds 4 to consortium

Shaw Newspapers in northern Illinois and Iowa; The Buffalo (N.Y.) News; Times Publishing Co. in Erie, Pa., and The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., joined Yahoo Inc.’s newspaper consortium, Yahoo said. The new papers bring the total number of participants to 634 — 425 of which are dailies.

The search engine said 30 percent of all U.S. daily papers and 37 percent of Sunday papers are now members of the group, founded in 2006.

Since the launch of the consortium, Yahoo said Web traffic to HotJobs has grown by more than 50 percent, and that newspapers have also begun to sell HotJobs ads as part of their packages to local advertisers.

Meantime, 126 of the consortium’s newspapers feature Yahoo search on their sites, Yahoo said.