Yahoo to acquire ad targeter Interclick for $270 million

Interclick's proprietary tools, such as Open Segment Manager and Genome Platform, were built to handle large volumes of data from multiple providers and marketplaces.

"The combination of Yahoo's premium data and inventory with our platforms will create tremendous value for clients," said Michael Katz, founder and CEO of Interclick

Yahoo, which has yet to appoint a CEO since the ousting of Carol Bartz in September, aims to use the invesment to improve Yahoo's performance in both "guaranteed and non-guaranteed" display business across Yahoo, said Ross Levinsohn, exeutive vice president for the Americas region of Yahoo.

The internet portal's display advertising sales have stalled in the last quarter and desperately need a boost, analyst at BGC Partners Colin Gillis told Bloomberg. He was, however, doubtful that Interclick was the solution saying, “the deal is not going to change whether buyers are going to come or not.”

However, if Yahoo successfully cements ad partnership agreements with Microsoft and AOL, Interclick could facillitate that partnership as, according to Yahoo, the Interclick team is experienced at "selling audiences across disparate sources of pooled supply”, noted CNET.