Hot on the heels of the news that the debut of the new ad platform for Yahoo! Search would be out in the third quarter comes news that, oops, it won’t be until sometime in the fourth quarter. Announced in their quarterly earnings call, the extra delay was reportedly due to an unexpected length of time for quality testing and control.
Although we have to be happy they want to get it right the first time, if Yahoo! doesn’t keep to announced release times on something as important as this, they are just putting more money in Google’s pockets. It’s not as if Yahoo! is operating in the same industry as Microsoft with its much-delayed Vista upgrade – there’s lots of growing competition for online advertising, but not much a beleagured PC owner can do about yet another delay by Microsoft with a new OS (alas). And with Microsoft also champing at the bit to ramp up its advertising center, Yahoo! has even more reason to pull out all the stops and figure out a way to speed it up and get that product out there if they want to keep their place in the horserace that is online advertising today. Giddy-up, guys! ![[]](http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/wp-content/themes/sms/images/entry-end.gif)
