Major search engines are dead serious about the mounting competition in the industry. In retort to Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, Yahoo purchased Right Media's ad exchange for $680 million consideration.

Yahoo! press release blog post written by Terry Semel, Google's chairman and CEO stated:

We think supply and demand should be regulated by the marketplace, not a closed platform. Right Media provides a democratic model that empowers advertisers with all of these benefits. We think our open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and will provide significant benefits to publishers and advertisers.

This acquisition will help Yahoo! build on its leadership in online advertising. We've been moving aggressively over a number of months to enhance our leading ad tools and capabilities, through initiatives like Panama and major partnerships like those with eBay and a consortium of more than 260 newspapers. Right Media builds on those efforts by helping us not only realize more value from our inventory, but also continue to transform how advertisers and publishers connect to their audiences.

We see this as a key step in executing our long-term vision to build the industry's leading advertising and publishing ecosystem - both on and off Yahoo!'s network.