Yahoo! and Microsoft extended their advertising relationship today until mid-2006, according to a Reuters news report. The deal involves Yahoo!'s Overture unit continuing to place search keyword related advertisments on Microsoft's MSN sites globally. Though public details of the value of the deal were not revealed by either company, Reuters reported, analysts speculated it could net $200 million a year for Yahoo!.

With Microsoft developing its own ad technology, this may very well be the last time a deal like this is extended between the two search adversaries.

SBC and Yahoo! jointly announced today they were extending their SBC Yahoo! relationship into new arenas. Under the terms of the new agreement, SBC Yahoo! users will be able to access their information through "television and audio systems, Cingular wireless phones, SBC FreedomLink Wi-Fi and SBC Home Networking equipment."

New products related to this expanded relationship will reportedly be available in 2005. Here are more specifics by category directly from the press release:

• Project Lightspeed and Home Entertainment - The SBC Yahoo! look and feel will be extended to customers of a new SBC home entertainment service. It will be available to SBC Yahoo! DSL subscribers and to customers who will receive super high-speed Internet access over the new SBC Project Lightspeed fiber optic network. The experience will extend to the home television and stereo, including features such as Video On Demand, LAUNCHcast Internet Radio, SBC Yahoo! Photos and remote access to digital video recorders (DVR). It will also enable customers to view Caller ID or access all their messages - either e-mail, voicemail or faxes - from the SBC Unified Communications service on several different devices.

• Cingular Wireless - The companies will work to develop a co-branded SBC Yahoo! experience for SBC Yahoo! customers who subscribe to Cingular wireless service, enabling them to access personalized Web-based content and all their integrated messages.

• SBC FreedomLink Wi-Fi - The companies will work to further integrate the SBC Yahoo! environment with the SBC Wi-Fi service, including local search information which, for example, would allow customers to get directions to the nearest local florist - even if they are not in their hometown.

• SBC Home Networking - The companies will work to integrate an SBC Yahoo! environment with the home networking gateway which is offered along with SBC Yahoo! DSL service.

• SBC Unified Communications - The companies will work to integrate the current service features to work seamlessly with SBC Yahoo! Mail, further enhancing the "one mailbox" service for all e-mail, wireline and wireless voicemail and faxes. The companies will also work together to develop one consolidated address book, accessible by computer, phone or television.

Yahoo!, perhaps facing a tight marketing budget or looking for a new perspective for interactive marketing, apparently laid off their internal online creative team in October and has outsourced the task to WPP Group's OgilvyOne.

OgilvyOne, according to New Media Concepts, is looking into opening a San Francisco office to be near the Silicon Valley housed Internet portal and has hired a managing director to oversee relations with their new, large client. While another advertising agency will remain as Yahoo!'s agency of note, OgilvyOne will handle "online creative and marketing services for the Yahoo brand."

Is Yahoo! planning an advertising service which would place ads within RSS feeds? Based on comments coming from the Internet portal, WebProNews seems to think so. In an article published Monday, they said plans for a Yahoo!'s RSS advertising service were revealed during a Q&A session at the recent Web 2.0 Conference. Yahoo! COO Dan Rosensweig reportedly said in response to his company's interest in this type of advertising that

"Absolutely. We're in the advertising business and in the business of creating incremental value."

Yahoo!'s Overture unit would reportedly oversee the RSS advertising service, according to WebProNews.

Might this have something to do with the recent help wanted ad for Yahoo! RSS "Hacker"?

Yahoo! upped the ante in the online dating services market yesterday with the unveiling of their new Yahoo! Personals Premier service. According to a press release on the new premium offering, $34.95 a month will provide those "seeking long-term relationships with deeper personality profiling, advanced searching tools and an exclusive pool of like-minded singles."

Specifically, Yahoo! is pushing a new "SmartFit" system for Personals Premier. It combines basic search criteria with results from a new, interactive dating scenario test ( Personality & Love Style Test) and new in depth personality profile (Relationship Test) to better match singles. These results are displayed in the form of several ratings, including overall fit, personality fit and relationship fit.

Get your Yahoo! detective gear on! Yahoo! and Warner Brothers are pushing a special interactive promotion to drum up attention for the mid-December release of Ocean's Twelve. The Mastermind Challenge, which requires registration through Warner Brothers, posts two questions per week related to the movie plot (started Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 17). It is suggested on each question page that you use a Yahoo! property to help find the answers. Answering all 12 questions correctly will get you entered into a drawing for a trip for two to European destinations shown in the film. There are some other cool prizes as well.

[link via ComingSoon.net]

Yahoo! is seeking a RSS "hacker", according to a post at Y! employee Jeremy Zawodny's blog. Specifically, "we're looking for a good RSS hacker with some large systems and scaling experience to help with our RSS backend systems (aka, our "content aggregation platform")."

Another interesting tidbit: "We have big plans for content syndication." Is this in regards to expansion of existing RSS feeds available in My Yahoo!, or something grander? We'll have to wait and see…

[link via WebProNews]

The Online Computer Library Center, a library cooperative of more than 9,000 libraries, has teamed with Yahoo! to provide integrated search results of two million of their most popular records in a co-branded Yahoo! Toolbar. The toolbar, which will bring up search results from the OCLC WorldCat central catalog of library holdings, is designed to help increase the online visibility of libraries and their collections.

The toolbar, according to a press release, will " enable consumers to narrow their search results to the WorldCat database and help them locate libraries in their vicinity that have the record, book, or document that they are looking for."

This seems a no brainer. Who is the best person to lead your staff of editors, programmers and the like for a news property? A top notch news edtior, of course. Case in point: News.com picked up Friday on the fact Yahoo! hired former Wall Street Journal Online editor Neil Budde to run their News site.

And yes, before you ask, this seems to be another move by the Internet portal to get more original content in their stable. Budde, given his background in the newspaper business, undoubtly has a number of connections which whould serve him well in drumming up partnerships. Failing that, we may end up seeing at some point a daily Yahoo! News broadcast.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (registration required) Yahoo! is quietly knocking on Hollywood doors for new original material content deals.

People familiar with the discussions say Yahoo is pressing entertainment-industry producers and talent agents to start pitching new shows and short films that the Internet giant could license for broadcast online.

Yahoo!, according to the Times, thinks consumers are ready for broadband content since the number of high speed Internet connections at home is on a huge upswing.

Beating the same dead horse, this story falls in line with what I was blogging on regarding News.com's story about Yahoo!'s push towards new forms of entertainment for subscribers.

Yahoo! Shopping has a new Holiday Gift Center available to help online shoppers. This new site, according to Internetnews.com will

include lists of the most popular products in various categories, free shipping offers and information on shipping. Featured products will be a mix of paid placements and editorial picks.

Additionally, Yahoo! Shopping improved the search results returned to shoppers with something called "precision browsing."

Precision browsing, as Internetnews.com said, helps "users narrow their searches by clicking on a list of product attributes returned with results, a strategy that combines old-styled browsing with search."

One of the techies over at Yahoo! has developed a hack to Search Keys, a Firefox extension which provides keyboard support for visiting Google search results. What does the hack do? Why, it enables Yahoo! Search results keyboard support of course.

There's an interesting article over at Cnet about the long term ramifications of Lloyd Braun, a former ABC executive, joining Yahoo! to help them drum up more original media and entertaiment content deals. Cnet speculates this is perhaps a natural movement by companies like the Internet portal towards new ways of keeping eyeballs around longer:

The move is part of a natural evolution of the leading portals, including America Online and Microsoft's MSN, as they search for new ways to expand their businesses beyond aggregation of content that has become commoditized on the Web. Although they survived the dot-com meltdown, the portals have been forced to compete for limited advertising dollars while conceding much of the search-engine business to market leader Google.

This move, according to Cnet, seems to tie in with Yahoo!'s recent speculated, but denied to comment on, bidding for CBS Marketwatch.

The big question for Yahoo! as they make changes like this falls to what it will take to keep bringing people to them. In the old days, it was for web links. As web users became more savvy, they began sticking around for message boards, chat, personals, games and other interactive features. More recently, content deals like the Apprentice Yahoo! TV site have shown a direction which reflects more towards the Braun hiring and CBS Marketwatch bidding.

Who knows - soon there may be Yahoo! the Survivor series, where you spend weeks trapped in the Yahoo! Complex in Silicon Valley, doing things like trying to find your way out of a massive maze of cubicles or singing the Yahoo! Yodel while juggling flaming Ys.

[Link via New Media Musings]

I know this seems goofy to mention, but for the second time this week Yahoo! has highlighted another story related to corn in their "In the News" box on the front page. This one is about Pioneer Corp. developing a new eco-friendly Blu-ray optical disc which can be written to once and stores 25GB of data.

This comes on the heels of a story on Tuesday about corn tossing. Hey Yahoo!, isn't this getting a little corny now? :)

A snapshot of the Yahoo! News box on the portal's front page as of 11:30 a.m. PST today. Voters flocking to elect a new president, kidnappings, Peterson murder trial, the endangered species list growing…and corn toss catching growing beyond the Midwest.

Nice to see an unusual story highlighted by Yahoo! News editors on such a serious day :)