• The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, February 15, 2007 11:15 AM

Despite the fact it has little in the way of original content and even less in the way of programming that really competes with television, Yahoo persists with Yahoo In Front, its annual gala designed to woo media buyers and planners to its broadband services. Yahoo purposely holds the event a few months before the television upfront season to steal a share of advertisers' enormous TV budgets.

This year's pared down show was long on "serious-minded" lecturing about the benefit of buying ads on the Web portal. This was deliberate, as Yahoo sustained criticism last year for failing to efficiently monetize its massive audience. Yahoo is trying to bring ad growth back in line with competitors like Google.

However, the competition for eyeballs comes from a greater variety of sources, including social networks, online video companies, even TV broadcasters--which have begun uploading content to the Web themselves, pitching online tie-ins to regular TV buys.

Yahoo's message centered on the ability to buy targeted audiences across a multitude of different platforms, from its large My Yahoo user base to Yahoo Video to its recently launched mobile wireless offerings.

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