Cloud based data management

Anxious Yahoo! bosses showed an overwhelming desire yesterday to stop its existing search advertisers worrying about the company’s recent pact with Microsoft.

Last week the two firms said that its wonks were beavering away at their ad and sales switcheroo planned for later this year, after US and EU regulators gave the search deal the go-ahead in February.

Yahoo! said in February it would focus on its display ad and content biz. Meanwhile it hopes to make $500m annually from the pact with Microsoft.

In a blog post yesterday, Yahoo! admitted that its search advertisers had “a lot of concerns” about the deal and how it might affect their business.

The company responded to some individual queries in the post, including questions about whether Microsoft’s adCenter will allow advertisers to punt liquor keywords, as it’s Redmond’s current policy to exclude those search terms on MSN.

“After the transition, Yahoo! will have the ability to continue to display some ads that Microsoft does not currently display on its own sites (e.g., adult ads), and vice-versa. However, no specific decision has been announced regarding liquor-related keywords,” said the firm.

Another asked if “the new platform [would] allow us to run FLASH driven and video capture pages? Currently adCenter pauses campaigns that have video-driven capture pages since they cannot read the file. This has been a drag for marketers, as the web continues to transition to video than actual ‘web copy’.”

Yahoo! said the two companies hadn’t worked that one out yet. ®

Cloud based data management