After a long struggle to attract sellers, the Yahoo Ad Exchange, formerly known as the Right Media Exchange, has shuttered the publisher-facing side of its business.
The Right Media Exchange was one of the web’s earliest programmatic exchanges, launched in 2003. Yahoo acquired it in 2007, and rebranded it as the Yahoo Ad Exchange in 2014.
AdExchanger broke the story yesterday, writing that Yahoo is “finally shutting down the exchange,” which has been on “do not resuscitate” status for some time. It reported that inventory volume and buyer demand had been deteriorating for years, and the shutdown had long been expected. One source called the exchange’s remaining low-quality inventory “a swamp.”
The exchange will remain operational as a programmatic marketplace for display ads on Yahoo-owned sites like Flickr, Yahoo Answers and Yahoo Mail, similar to internal marketplaces such as Facebook’s FBX. Yahoo will also continue to operate a trading desk and buy off-site ads on behalf of brands, using its proprietary technology.
But Yahoo isn’t out of the platform game yet. It still has Flurry, a mobile ad tech company that operates a publisher network and programmatic marketplace, and Brightroll, an integrated video buying and selling platform that processes some 45 billion impressions per month. Repurposing the Yahoo Ad Exchange may signal that the company is changing its platform sales strategy to focus on mobile and video, the same way it’s shifted its focus to mobile and video on the media side.
Yahoo is rumoured to be creating a self-service platform for buying across Flurry’s mobile network, using Yahoo’s mobile DSP platform, Gemini. Flurry’s network includes app publishers like The Guardian, Skout, and Glu.
As for Brightroll, Yahoo’s $640 million acquisition hasn’t been completed, and so far no management or operational changes have been announced. It’s not yet clear whether Brightroll will be merged into Yahoo’s technology business or continue to operate as a separate unit.
