• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 11, 2012

Yahoo bought interclick last November for $270 million, and this week the company began rolling out Genome, an audience buying platform built on the acquisition's ad targeting technology.

Announced in May, the technology relied on Open Segment Management developed by interclick engineers to manage data sources. The platform lets brands reach ad inventory across the Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft display ad partnership, and build audience profiles using Yahoo's first-party data, along with third-party data.

Genome can access user data for 76% of the U.S. population when combining first- and third-party data, along with data from more than 300 million daily searches worldwide, and about 50,000 user characterizations from partnerships with 25 of the industry's data providers like eXelate and BlueKai, according to a Yahoo post.

The blog also explains how Genome helps marketers tackle the challenges of big data, technology fragmentation, outdated planning and buying techniques, and lack of actionable insights.

The platform, also available to agencies, such as Accuen Media, Omnicom's Trading Desk, will make data, audience segments and technology available to their customers through buying platforms. It supports predictive modeling and relies on analytics to forecast, optimize, and measure audience performance, turning insights into actionable media that gives marketers information to act on the data.

In June, Wayne Powers, SVP of North America sales at Yahoo, told MediaPost that Genome works in parallel in the lower part of the marketing funnel to assist search engine marketing by allowing advertisers to target ad messages to a specific consumer segment.