NEW YORK, May 1 (UPI) -- Yahoo! Inc. has agreed to pay $680 million for the 80 percent of U.S. online advertising firm Right Media Inc. it does not already own, the Internet firm said.
Privately held Right Media runs an online auction system called Right Media Exchange that lets advertisers, publishers and ad networks trade digital media.
The acquisition "will help democratize the buying and selling of digitally enabled (Web) advertising," Yahoo! Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel said.
Yahoo!, of Sunnyvale, Calif., plans to be both a buyer and a seller on that advertising network.
The Internet-services company bought 20 percent of Right Media for $45 million in October.
The purchase followed Google Inc.'s April 14 announcement it planned to buy online ad firm DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion after engaging in a bidding war with Microsoft Corp. and America Online.
Asked if the Right Media buy was a response to Google's DoubleClick purchase, Semel said told The Washington Post it "absolutely is not."
Yahoo!, No. 2 in the online search market after Google, is considered the leader in large ads that feature images, whereas Google is the leader in text ads.
