After a long wait and constant delays in the development process, today Yahoo, Inc. finally released APT, its brand new ad serving platform which aims at providing publishers and advertisers with a unified, simple and intuitive interface to make the Internet advertising business much easier to manage for both parties.

While the APT website is currently short on details, it definitely builds expectation for a project that has been going on for some 2 years and which was previewed in April, when the company was under pressure due to Microsoft's acquisition attempt.

APT will mainly serve display advertising, or ads placed on the websites of publishers who have previously joined the program and will earn from renting their space, much like the Google AdWords/Adsense platform: but, in addition, APT also features its own ad network linking publishers and advertisers directly, as well as an ad marketplace where advertisement space can be bought and sold to the best bidder.

The platform also introduces features that are highly requested by Internet advertisers, such as behavioral targeting based on collected user information, complete managing of the ad displaying schedule and targeting based on personal information such as age, gender and location, all from a simple interface that is easy to set up and put to its best use.

APT's main aim is to give new life to the currently mediocre Yahoo profits in Internet advertising, which according to many are among the main causes of the slow financia
l decline of the company. To this regard, the much rumored about partnership with Google could mean a renewal of their advertising technology from the ground up, which could in turn attract the attention of new publishers and advertisers all around the world.

According to EMarketer Inc., the online ad spending in the US could rise to over $26 billion by the end of the year, with Google controlling one third and Yahoo's share at around fifteen percent. While the Mountain View giant dominates the scene of US search ads with almost three quarters of the market against Yahoo's 13%, the latter is still the leader in the display ad market, with an estimated market share of 33%.

Sue Decker, Yahoo president, announced that the 800 members of the Newspaper Consortium will start using the platform to manage their online ads by the end of the year, explaining that one of the main benefits that come from Yahoo APT is the openness of the system, which allows advertisers to reach their potential customers on the websites they wish, allowing publishers to monetize their spaces through channels that are constantly expanding.

Whether this will be enough to increase Yahoo's marketshare against the always competitive Google and Microsoft-branded solutions is still unclear even for market analysts given the lack of detailed information at this point, but the release of APT is at the very least a strong sign from Yahoo that the company is still strong and has the ability to stand on its feet competing as a worthy opponent against the other giants of the Web advertising industry.