- Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Havas and Yahoo! have reached a deal to create a platform for the holding company's agencies to participate on Yahoo!'s online media exchange.

The multiyear agreement calls for Havas' digital unit and Yahoo! to develop a trading platform for Havas shops that will link in with Yahoo!'s Right Media Exchange, which matches buyers and sellers of Web inventory.

Havas hopes to use its own store of interaction data, compiled in its Artemis data warehouse, to more precisely target consumer segments. It is also working with Yahoo! to build an outsourcing capability for the creation of Web display ads to run on Right Media.

The deal is the second Yahoo! has struck with a holding company, following last month's similar agreement with WPP. Havas Digital includes the French company's interactive media firms, Media Contacts and Lattitud.

Havas also said it would adopt AMP, the Yahoo! bid to deploy technology to simplify and automate the process of buying, placing and tracking online ad campaigns. Thus far, AMP is in testing with several publishers in Yahoo!'s consortium of newspaper partners. The company plans to release the product in the fall.

Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft are all bidding to build ad platforms that ease the process of buying and selling online media while increasing targeting.

In the wake of Microsoft withdrawing its bid for the company, Yahoo! has undertaken a flurry of public activity. It made several announcements today, including a deal to sell banner and video ads on Walmart.com, the expansion of its newspaper consortium and a new program to distribute digital newspaper circulars on its publishing network.