News is that Yahoo! Buzz is getting some new features! Now, Yahoo Buzz Publisher has new landing pages. These pages can be used to display submitted content along with related activity for their “Buzzed up” contents.
The landing pages will have publisher-specific Yahoo! Updates modules and RSS/Add-to-My Yahoo! Buzz feeds.

Finally Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang officially announced his retirement from the position that he had assumed about 18 months ago. It was not an unexpected move, still it came as a shock to many of us.

The official press release begins as follows:

“Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a search for a new Chief Executive Officer. Jerry Yang, co-Founder of Yahoo!, has decided to return to his former role as Chief Yahoo! upon the appointment of his successor as CEO, and he will also continue to serve on the Board. Yang, 40, assumed the CEO role at the Board’s request in June 2007, and he has led Yahoo! through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform. Chairman Roy Bostock, working with the independent directors and in consultation with Jerry Yang, is leading the process of assessing potential candidates and determining finalists for consideration. The search will encompass both internal and external candidates, and the Board has retained Heidrick & Struggles, a leading international executive search firm, to assist in the process.”

Yahoo! has launched a geo-targeting system for its search ad placement service, in an effort to help search ad campaign managers fine tune campaigns to their target audience.

But, how will it work? Well, the new feature will analyze different search queries of the users, such as their IP addresses and various other information, that determine the users’ location and the genre of ads Yahoo Search will deliver them.

You view the feature once you login to your Yahoo Ad Campaign account. When you select the “geo-targeting” feature tab, it will allow you to select areas like:

Some reports at the WebmasterWorld, depict that Yahoo! Search is undergoing an update. Some changes have been noticed by many web masters in the Yahoo Search results, however, the search engine has not confirmed this yet.

Yahoo! has announced, the completion of formalities for its multi-year advertising deal with the retail-king Walmart. The new deal will enable Walmart to use Yahoo’s advertising platform and simultaneously, Yahoo! will be become the sole platform for the online display of Walmart’s advertisements and inventory.

As per the new deal, Yahoo! will use its existing abundance of leading brand advertisers for Walmart, as its primary marketing and sales channel for its video display and advertising. Through the use of Yahoo’s AMP (Advertising Management Program), Yahoo! has also taken the responsibility for Walmart’s ad pricing, targeting, delivery and reporting. This would mark Walmart as another addition to Yahoo’s AMP. In a related AMP news, Yahoo! has also announced its multi-year Global Partnership with Havas Digital, where Havas too, will be borrowing heavily on Yahoo’s AMP.

Google and Yahoo! have finally done it. Yahoo Inc and Google have announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement. Yahoo! Press Releases give out the details of the partnership and also state that Panama will be functioning just the same. Yahoo! shares still dropped Friday in spite of this good news. Henry Blodgett from Silicon Valley Insider thinks the deal is very good for Yahoo, even better than the strange “wacky chop-shop plan Microsoft proposed” that has now died.

More at Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo! Press Release:

Agreement Advances Yahoo!’s Open Strategy; Enhances Ability to
Compete in Converging Search and Display Marketplace