Under fire for under-performing, Yahoo is making all kinds of wholesale changes. Among them is a radical redesign of its homepage -- which Reuters points out is the most heavily trafficked site on the Web -- a move that will give users more control. Yahoo is looking to make good on its promise to turn its "more or less insular properties" into "starting points" that help users take advantage of the greater Web. "We are going to put what matters to you most at your fingertips," said Tapan Bhat, the senior vice president in charge of "front doors" -- the …

Speaking at an annual Goldman Sachs media conference, InterActiveCorp chairman Barry Diller dismissed the social networking craze, but he said the Web in general is still in the early stages of fulfilling its potential as an advertising medium. Despite the deceleration in online display growth, Diller expects ad models based on TV to play an increasing role online, particularly pre- and post-roll video ads. He added that improvements to targeting would accelerate ad growth and that privacy would not really be concern. "Since there is no privacy, there is no use fooling around with it on the edges," Diller …

"Display ads have fallen on hard times," according to The Wall Street Journal, and given this week's meltdown in the financial sector -- traditionally a big buyer of online display ads -- things may get worse before they get better for Web publishers. Even so, some major Web companies are trying to engineer a comeback for display ads, despite the dark economic times. Microsoft, in particular, is making the pitch that display performs better for marketers than search in certain areas. Yahoo and Time Warner's AOL would agree (given Google's insurmountable lead in search, the largest online advertising category, …

APEX, Yahoo's new Advertiser Publisher Exchange, may be Jerry Yang's last throw of the dice as Yahoo CEO. Company shareholders are calling for Yang's head after Yahoo's share price fell below $19 in recent weeks -- a five-year low for the Web giant. Meanwhile, Yahoo profits and sales growth are both slowing, thanks in part to a slowdown in the U.S. display advertising market. In an interview where BusinessWeek describes Yang as looking "every bit the embattled chief executive he is," Yang stresses that APEX "is a big bet" -- and could very likely be his last big bet. "It …