Yahoo! today announced intentions to bring to market AMP! from Yahoo!, a new advertising management platform designed to significantly simplify the process of buying and selling ads online.

Central to Yahoo!’s strategy to be the partner of choice for advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks, AMP! plans to take the pain and complexity out of advertising online by providing an integrated, web-based solution that allows ease of cross-selling across a large ecosystem of buyers and sellers.

“While online advertising grows more sophisticated, the process of doing business today is surprisingly cumbersome and manual,” said Hilary Schneider, EVP, Global Partner Solutions, Yahoo!. “AMP! from Yahoo will enable advertisers and publishers to connect with each other and their exact target audiences across the increasingly fragmented Internet, in a way that’s not possible with current solutions. We believe AMP! will deliver a faster, easier, and more automated and integrated way to create, buy, and sell advertising and do so across a transparent global marketplace. And with the time saved, the industry can better focus on developing great creative.”

Yahoo! recently previewed AMP! for members of its Newspaper Consortium and received overwhelmingly positive feedback on its transformative potential.

“We are highly enthusiastic about the potential of this platform,” said Jay Smith, President, Cox Newspapers. “We’re blown away by how Yahoo! is working with intensity and commitment to create a collaborative and very efficient platform that we expect will have a significant impact on our sales capabilities. This is a turning point for our industry. And, we are equally excited about the tremendous value Yahoo! sees in our great local newspaper content, which is getting broader exposure nationally on some of Yahoo!’s most popular sites.”

AMP! from Yahoo!, formerly referred to as Project Apex, will roll out in phases beginning with members of the Newspaper Consortium in Q3 2008. Yahoo! plans to extend the functionality of the platform as well as participation to additional publishers, advertisers, agencies, and ad networks through the rest of 2008 and into 2009.