Search engine provider Yahoo! has announced it plans to release a new advertising management platform. Intended for use by advertisers, agencies, ad networks and publishers, AMP! aims to simplify the process of buying and selling ads online.
According to a company statement, the platform will enable advertisers to "precisely yet easily" target audiences, while also allowing publishers to "better monetise their content".
"While online advertising grows more sophisticated, the process of doing business today is surprisingly cumbersome and manual," stated Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of global partner solutions at Yahoo!.
She added: "AMP! from Yahoo! will enable advertisers and publishers to connect with each other and their exact target audiences across the increasingly fragmented internet in a way that's not possible with current solutions."
Using the platform, marketers will be able to buy from an inventory including search, display, local, video and mobile ads. The information will be available on a single, integrated interface.
Yahoo! intends to roll out the service in phases, beginning with members of the Newspaper Consortium - who have already seen a preview of it - in the third quarter of this year.
It then plans to extend AMP! to other organisations throughout the rest of 2008 and into 2009.
AMP! was previously referred to by Yahoo! as Project Apex and was being reported on as early as September 2007.
