Yahoo at work on multi-platform digital ad effort

Yahoo is developing a new multi-platform advertising initiative the web services giant promises will simplify how brands and marketers operate their digital efforts. Dubbed Apex--i.e., "advertiser-publisher exchange"--the service will incorporate display, video, search and mobile ads, and purports to streamline the increasing complexities and redundancies of planning and booking digital campaign for buyers and sellers alike. Speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ecosystem 2.0 conference in Phoenix, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and president Susan Decker said Apex will launch in the second half of 2008. Yahoo will mount the effort in association with a newspaper consortium spanning roughly 500 publishers, enabling the pubs to sell additional inventory on their websites. "We're trying to revolutionize the online advertising industry," Decker said. "Yahoo recognizes that because of the way the web and advertising has developed, it has become very complex and requires a platform underneath it. That's the only way we're going to decrease the friction."

For more on Apex:
- read this Adweek

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