SUNNYVALE, CA – Yahoo! Inc. on Monday previewed a new advertising-management program the company said will “significantly simplify the process of buying and selling ads online.”AMP! from Yahoo! was designed to provide an integrated, Web-based solution that allows cross-selling across a large ecosystem of buyers and sellers. It will allow advertisers to target audiences while enabling publishers to better monetize their content, a Yahoo! spokeswoman said.

“While online advertising grows more sophisticated, the process of doing business today is surprisingly cumbersome and manual,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of the Global Partner Solutions group at Yahoo! “AMP! from Yahoo! will enable advertisers and publishers to connect with each other and their exact target audiences across the increasingly fragmented internet in a way that’s not possible with current solutions. We believe AMP! will deliver a faster, easier and more automated and integrated way to create, buy and sell advertising, and do so across a transparent global marketplace. And with the time saved, the industry can better focus on developing great creative.”

Yahoo! execs hope the AMP! platform will help marketers buy across search, display, local, mobile and video inventory, all within a single, integrated interface. According to Schneider, it has the ability to deliver highly relevant advertising to consumers across the entire Web, driving better results for marketers. AMP! also provide a suite of tools that allows geographic, demographic and interest-based targeting across a network that includes Yahoo!-owned and -operated inventory and more than 600 U.S. newspapers in the Newspaper Consortium.

An open platform available to any participant, AMP! ultimately will include Yahoo!’s network of premium publishing partners, agencies, ad networks and thousands of other smaller publishers from across the Web, Schneider indicated.

Designed based on analysis of what Yahoo! termed “the inefficiencies that currently constrain the industry,” AMP! is under development by a team of engineers, product managers and strategists, and user-interface design experts familiar with the online advertising industry, Schneider said. A video demonstration of AMP! can be viewed at http://advertising.yahoo.com/amp.

Members of Yahoo!’s Newspaper Consortium recently previewed the product.

“We are highly enthusiastic about the potential of this platform,” said Cox Newspapers President Jay Smith. “We’re blown away by how Yahoo! is working with intensity and commitment to create a collaborative and very efficient platform that we expect will have a significant impact on our sales capabilities. This is a turning point for our industry. And, we are equally excited about the tremendous value Yahoo! sees in our great local newspaper content, which is getting broader exposure nationally on some of Yahoo!’s most popular sites.”

Formerly referred to as Project Apex, AMP! from Yahoo! will roll out in phases beginning in the third quarter of this year.