Following close on the heels of the Google deal that made everyone tremble because Yahoo! and Google would achieve an overwhelming monopoly in the market, has worked on its strong points and upgraded its image ads system.

The new system is named apt, changed from amp because of a trademark conflict. At present the platform is targeted at newspaper ads only, and complements web sites with extremely focused ads that are derived from the surfer’s online activities. This focus of the ads means more returns to the advertisers, and more revenues per ad for Yahoo!

There are many innovations of the apt platform, which will eventually be used by a consortium of more than 750 newspapers. One of the important innovations is the pooling of advertising space across web pages, meaning an advertiser can purchase web pages in many domains as a single domain is unlikely to churn out as many customers with such tightly targeted ads.

The apt platform has improved key word searching algorithms, a better tracking system in place for the advertisers, and support for videos and sound ads. While previous improvements on its ad system (called the panama) did little to improve the standings of Yahoo! stocks, the apt platform may well be the much necessary innovation to help save a sinking company.

Google may sit up and take notice of this technique and may also follow suit, since Adsense is not fair to publishers and Ad words is quite expensive to advertisers. The system needs to be changed soon, and this seems to be a fair solution for both the ends. Chikitsa and AdClix along with AdBrite have already made a new system which makes the advertisers to gain an upper hand in the advertising business. Only time will tell regarding Yahoo’s success in this race.