Yahoo advertising platform delayed

Internet portal operator Yahoo has upset shareholders with low sales prospects and delays to its new advertising platform. The long-awaited new advertising system for search queries will be postponed by three months to the fourth quarter, announced company boss Terry Semel according to SDA. Yahoo needs more time before the system can be presented to customers. The company will not even be able to introduce individual parts until the beginning of 2007. For this reason, the system will not have a noticeable effect on profits until the spring. Yahoo wants to earn more money with ads on pages with search results. Its competitor Google has taken market share in this area. A few months ago, Yahoo therefore agreed a comprehensive cooperation with the Internet auction house Ebay for advertising and trading on the Internet (see
Yahoo and Ebay attack Google) The sales forecasts are also not encouraging for investors: Yahoo is expecting sales of 4.60 to 4.85 billion dollars for the whole of 2006, whereas analysts had expected up to 4.9 billion dollars. In the second quarter just ended, net profit fell by 78 percent to 164 million dollars. However, analysts had expected this. Turnover rose by 28 percent to 1.12 billion dollars.