Yahoo will be announcing on Friday of its new partnership with WPP Group, an advertising holding company. This will give the clients of WPP a greater number of websites on which they can post their messages.
With this partnership, many web publishers that use Yahoo's services will be able to get more direct access to WPP's clients while WPP clients in turn can focus their messages to visitors that are more receptive. In addition, the information that the agency can collect about the demographic profile of people who visit the Yahoo service will benefit the database that Group M, WPP's planning and buying agency, collects on customer information.
This deal comes at a particular time for Yahoo because it had just resisted a takeover from Microsoft. Now, an investor named Carl C. Icahn is pushing Yahoo to go under Microsoft. WPP's Martin Sorrell, the chief executive, stated that he'd like to see Microsoft and Yahoo reach an agreement. He does not like the market being at an unbalance and seems to be hoping that Yahoo and Microsoft will get together. This would benefit him, since he will be able to reach more sites from which the agency can collect information.
It seems that in making this partnership with Yahoo, WPP will be gaining a greater advantage. While publishers that use Yahoo's advertising auction service will get more access to clients through WPP, the WPP Group receive more information for their database and from there, can use this information to narrow down and specialize their advertising.
If Yahoo and Microsoft does reach an agreement, again the WPP Group will be the one to benefit more because their range from which to collect data will increase greatly.
Hilary Schneider, the executive vice president for global partner solutions at Yahoo stated that the deal between the WPP Group and Yahoo was "about enabling WPP's full range of agencies to buy digital display advertising across the entire Internet in a much more efficient way." This shows how WPP is indeed benefiting more from the partnership than Yahoo would be. The financial terms, however, were not disclosed.
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