• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 12, 2011

After passing the backend search engine marketing infrastructure to Microsoft Bing, Yahoo can now get down to the business of developing content sites and building a network of portals to serve up display advertising on computers, mobile handsets and tablets. Complete conjecture on my part, of course, but what better way to build an ad network supported by companies like Right Media Exchange than to offer specialized publications on a variety of topics.

Yahoo's Right Media late last year rolled out Audience Sharing to enable more efficient audience-based buying, while increasing the relevance in ads delivered to consumers.

On Wednesday, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo launched ThePostGame.com, a daily magazine with videos, tweet and short articles on athletes, sports technology, travel fitness and more. The site will be produced by SportsFanLive.com, part of Yahoo's sports division.

David Katz, the chief executive of SportsFanLive, told The New York Times "it's our job to rearchitect the sports magazine for the Internet generation."

Not only have we begun to see the integration of search and display to drive traffic to a network of news and content portals, but Yahoo can now continue to build publisher and magazine sites to support a push in display advertising. Display advertising will support the free content in the online publications as the content drives more traffic throughout its network. Of course, this remains complete conjecture.

Gleacher & Company Analyst Yun Kim believes when Yahoo reports fiscal 4Q earnings "strong search volume and modest uplift in [the] display business" will drive results. The display business should benefit from accelerated growth in overall online advertising spending in the quarter, Kim wrote in a research report published Wednesday. "However, we note the upside in its display business, which is primarily driven by premium inventory, is limited due to lack of additional inventory and rates that were predetermined long before ads were placed," Kim explains.

SportsFanLive.com, Yahoo's social network and blog site, taps behavioral targeting, serving ads to site visitors, so I expect the same from ThePostGame.com. It's easy to tell when two days ago I went to the M&M Web site contemplating buying personalized candies for someone on Valentine's Day, and when visiting Yahoo's sports site it served me up an ad for personalized M&Ms. What a shock.

Visit SportsFanLive.com for the first time and the site asks for the one team you most love and hate. Those who provide answers will see articles and stats personalized to them. The new sports site, ThePostGame.com, also integrates content from partners and Twitter tweets from analysts and athletes such as CBS Sports Analyst Greg Anthony and Detroit Lions Defensive End Cliff Avril, who tweets "Up and ain't got nothin to do... "

Experian Hitwise's top 10 most popular Web sites for news and media ranked by click share for the week ending Jan. 2, 2010, puts Yahoo News at No. 1, Yahoo Local at No. 3, and Associated Content, owned by Yahoo, at No. 7.

It would benefit Yahoo to support the online sports magazine, and others it will likely launch, both with free content and paid. Sixty five percent of Internet users have paid to download or access some kind of online content from the Internet, ranging from music to games to news articles to adult material, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Most magazines and analyst firms offer both free and paid content. Do you think we will begin to see that from search engines and content portals? Does it make sense?