• Blog Maverick, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 10:30 AM

Forget DoubleClick and Right Media. Blog maverick and media billionaire-eccentric Mark Cuban says Yahoo's partnership to sell display advertising and video ads for Comcast is the deal of the year. To be sure, Comcast.net is big and its inventory is lucrative, but Cuban says access to the Comcast network makes this deal really significant.

He says that Yahoo's advertising platform, Panama, will be integrated into a video platform for the first time. For example, when Comcast serves video from Comcast.net to its high-speed Internet customers, these are private network subscribers, not regular Internet subscribers. Comcast controls its network in a similar manner to how corporations control their networks.

"The opportunities far exceed what are available on the general Internet," Cuban says, precisely because it gives Yahoo special access that Google couldn't get. The cable provider has the unique ability to deliver vast amounts of data over its network at high speeds--such as DVD quality video to PCs--without using the Internet. Thus, Yahoo and Comcast could start working together to develop their own video content and ad platforms, while leveraging all that customer data. Think of the possibilities--the move could mark a significant shift in the .net universe.

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