Here's Yahoo's Answer To Apple's iAds

Dan Frommer

2010-12-09T17:05:00Z

Apple's iAd has brought a lot of attention to mobile advertising, including the promise of bringing "emotional" advertising from television to the mobile handset.

Yahoo is the latest big publisher to reach out and say, hey, we can do that, too.

For context, with some 50 million monthly unique mobile users across its properties, Yahoo has substantial reach.

And according to IDC, it represented about 10% of the U.S. mobile display ad market this year, bringing in about $40 million in revenue.

We met with Yahoo's mobile advertising boss, Paul Cushman, yesterday in New York. His big-picture message to Madison Avenue: The technology and user base for mobile ads is here, so get out your checkbooks.

To be clear, Yahoo isn't launching a mobile ad network like Apple's iAd network. But it is trying to sell the same sort of good-looking ads.

Specifically, Yahoo is working with rich media providers Medialets and Crisp to deliver iAd-like multimedia ads. And for now, they say that they are seeing engagement and click-through rates that are higher than similar online ad campaigns.