Why might a publisher choose RightMedia over Google's AdSense? Well, in my experience I was rather unhappy with Google's AdSense program because it lacked transparency. You couldn't see what each ad was making per click, you didn't see Google's take in your profits, etc. RightMedia is the exact opposite - it is extraordinarily transparent and it gives publishers tremendous leeway in choosing which ads to show, where to show them, etc. Therefore, if a publisher receives an offer that isn't satisfactory he can simply reject the offer and move on.

Google's platform for advertisers is Google AdWords. Here, advertisers purchase advertising by determining keywords related to their business. The cost of the ad is determined by the popularity of the selected keywords. While this system has proven very effective for many advertisers, it has many drawbacks. Most notably is the fact that advertisers can't see or choose precisely which website their ad will be shown on. While this may not seem overly significant, I have seen investment blogs which talk about gold stocks and have been lucky enough to receive the ad listing for gold jewelry! I don't think the jewelry company would be happy about that. RightMedia fixes this issue as the jeweler can now see precisely which websites their ads will be shown.

As an added benefit, RightMedia's ads are much more innovative than those of Google. The majority of Google's ads are displayed in rather short, text formats (think: the little boxes on the right side of Google search results pages.) Conversely, however, RightMedia's ads tend to be more visually-oriented. These ads are becoming more and more prominent an the internet, especially in the Web 2.0 age.

The synergies between Yahoo! and RightMedia will be quickly occurring and strategically significant. The most important synergy is the rapid and sizable increase in liquidity and depth for the marketplace that Yahoo! will provide. Because Yahoo's advertising program was inevitably more popular than RightMedia (due to the fact that it has existed so much longer), I believe Yahoo! will be able to make many fresh introductions to RightMedia, further boosting RightMedia's marketplace. The acquisition will allow RightMedia to have access to basically any capital it needs to continue growing the business and furthering the marketplace. Lastly, Yahoo! will have the privilege to work with RightMedia's brilliant CEO going forward. His innovative and entrepreneurial mind is something that is in need at Yahoo!, in my opinion, as the company is forced to continue competing with internet powerhouse Google.

I think that this was just what Yahoo! needed to start really competing with Google because, up to now, Yahoo's advertising platform didn't differ enough from Google's AdSense to convince webmasters and advertisers to switch platforms. However, RightMedia's platform is powerful enough to convince this change due to the tremendous benefits and transparency it offers when compared to traditional advertising methods.

(Note: If you're interested in learning more about the future of internet advertising this article is excellent.)