IDG News Service —
The story, "Yahoo ad exchange offers 'deceptive' ads," and its update, both posted Friday, have been changed to more accurately describe Yahoo's Right Media division. Right Media is best described as Yahoo's ad exchange.
The story's headline has been changed on the wire and the first paragraph now reads:
Deceptive advertising may be illegal in the U.S., but Yahoo's ad exchange appears to offer it to publishers on a menu of choices when they're deciding what ads to run on their Web sites.
The seventh paragraph, which appears only in the update, now reads:
Yahoo should refuse to run deceptive ads, said Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School who studies Internet marketing practices. "It's hard to defend these ads' tactics. They intend to deceive, and by all indications they succeed," he said. "They have no proper place in Yahoo's ad network."
The seventh paragraph of the original story and the eighth paragraph of the update now read:
Yahoo bought Right Media for about US$700 million last year, looking to strengthen its position in its fight with Google for online advertising dollars. The exchange provides a marketplace for Web publishers who have been unable to fill all of their advertising spots, allowing unused ad inventory to be sold at auction to advertisers.


