Internet search engine Yahoo! has just completed the acquisition of Right Media, a process which it started in October of last year, making a strong play to take part in advertising in emerging markets.Yahoo!, which until recently held a 20 per cent stake in Right Media, paid 340 million pounds to buy the rest of the company.
Right Media is a company that operates the Right Media Exchange, a common market for advertisers, sites and digital networks to trade in digital media.
According to Right Media, a young company launched only two years ago, about 200,000 buyers and sellers use the platform every day.
It is thought the acquisition will open up the way for Yahoo! to be involved in advertising in sites that are normally overlooked by more traditional ad networks, which generally target busy traffic.
In particular, the possibility of delivering advertising to increasingly popular social networking sites, like MySpace and Bebo, makes Right Media an attractive acquisition for Yahoo!.
Yahoo! promised it would increase its buying and selling in its newly acquired online advertising exchange in order to improve liquidity.
But Yahoo!'s move has also prompted worries that advertisers might shirk away from participating in a market in which Yahoo! directly benefits, and many have highlighted the possible conflicts of interests that might arise.
Yahoo!'s CFO Susan Decker sought to ease these worries, saying it was in the company's best interest to have a "neutral" and "open" site that would give buyers a wide range of choices.
The move follows in the footsteps of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick for a more substantial figure of 1.6 billion pounds ($3.1 billion), in what seems to be a move for increasing consolidation in the internet advertising market.
