Yahoo! looks to target search advertising market

Despite reporting a drop in profits, Yahoo! has announced that its online advertising business grew in the third quarter of 2007.

The search engine reported a five per cent drop in its third-quarter profits - from $159 million (£78.2 million) to $151 million (£74.2 million).

However, it added that revenues jumped 12 per cent to $1.76 billion (£865.4 million), compared to $1.58 billion (£776.9) million in the same period last year.

Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive officer of the search engine, said that the company was looking to focus on online advertising in the coming months and years.

He explained: "Over the past three months, we conducted a thorough review of our business and the marketplace.

"We´ve made key strategic decisions to invest in and grow our large communities of users, advertisers, and publishers. We´ve also made progress in sharpening our focus and improving our execution.

"Moving forward, we are focused on three big, multi-year objectives: to become the starting point for the most consumers on the internet; to be the ´must buy´ for the most advertisers; and to deliver open, industry-leading platforms that attract the most developers."

A recent study from comScore showed that Yahoo!´s rival Google remained that most visited internet property in the UK in August.