• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 16, 2010

Yahoo Monday announced a new pilot program in which it is working with a group of "demand-side" ad exchanges and networks to develop best practices for audience-buying. Demand-side platforms involved in the program include Invite Media, Mediamath, Data Xu, Turn and X+1.

Agencies have increasingly turned to these ad systems to wrest more control of the ad-buying process from traditional online ad networks and keep more revenue for themselves as well.

"The pilot will demonstrate how Yahoo, in partnership with these industry leaders, can provide marketers with access to the audiences they most want to reach by leveraging insights from buyers, sellers and third-party data providers," wrote Ramsey McGrory, vice president, North American Marketplaces, and Seth Dallaire, vice president, mid market sales, on Yahoo's Advertising Blog.

They added that the program would also help the participating platforms enter into a tighter relationship with the Yahoo (Publisher) Network and the Right Media Exchange, including gaining access to the latter's real-time bidding (RTB) capability. Yahoo has been testing RTB, which let advertisers adjust ad buys on the fly on a per-impression basis, for the last several months.

The idea is that publishers benefit from higher ad rates for more targeted ads while advertisers increase the efficiency of media buys through the technology. A recent New York Times article highlighted how marketers such as eBay have been using RTB to boost their return on investment in online advertising.

The pilot program with demand-side platforms is part of Yahoo's broader effort to turn Right Media into a high-quality ad marketplace. To that end, the Web portal late last year kicked out the anonymous ad network using the platform and shut down its Direct Market Exchange unit aimed at smaller publishers. Yahoo said it will provide updates on its work with the demand-side networks.