Aside from the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, the biggest topic of conversation at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's convention this week was pork bellies.The seemingly odd topic sprang from comments by the group's incoming chairman Wenda Harris Millard, in her opening talk that: "We must not trade our advertising inventory like pork bellies."

Mike Walrath, 32, founded Right Media Inc. in 2003 as a New York-area consulting firm for buyers and sellers of internet advertisements. It wasn't long, though, before he created an online network where buyers and sellers could come together in a real-time internet ad auction. The concept caught on, and in 2005, VC firms started funding the company. After two rounds of venture financing, Right Media sold to Yahoo this spring for about $720 million. "We see this as the next logical step," Walrath says. "We don't talk about this as an outcome or an exit."

It's a simple idea, really: Nonpremium ad inventory can be worth more by increasing the odds buyer and seller find each other in an open, real-time market. It's one that made Michael Walrath's Right Media worth more than $850 million to Yahoo, which recently acquired the 80% share of the company it didn't already own (Yahoo spent $40 million on a 20% stake last year).

When ad technology company Right Media recently planned its first "analyst day," it invited 20 select advisors from Wall Street's top investment banks and research firms to its brand new digs, a sprawling 42,000-square-foot office on Manhattan's Park Avenue. It turned out, though, that the new headquarters wasn't quite big enough to accommodate the 50 analysts who showed up, hoping to hear presentations about Right Media's platform, which allows publishers to auction online ad inventory. A few gatecrashers even had to be turned away at the door.

Right Media had hardly moved into its new, bigger Park Avenue office in February before Chief Executive Michael Walrath began thinking about sledgehammering down walls to make more space. Sure, the place was bigger than Right Media's old digs. But Walrath expects business to triple in 2007, and if he's right, some office walls won't last the year.

On the Internet today, everybody knows you're a dog. In fact, legions of Internet companies also know your breed, your gender, your age, the neighborhood you live in, that you like pickup trucks, and that you spent, say, three hours and 43 seconds on a website for pet lovers on a rainy day in January. All that data streams through myriad computer networks, where it's sorted, catalogued, analyzed, and then used to deliver ads aimed squarely at you, potentially anywhere you travel on the Web.

As more and more small publisher ad networks come on board, Right Media has created an exchange system forcing network competition to serve ads on lesser-trafficked sites. RMX Direct pits networks against one another, awarding ad serving rights to the one agreeing to pay the highest cost per impression. Right Media has selected nine partner networks for the service, which also provides publishers with reporting.

"We’re starting to learn and understand how best to match buyers with the correct type of inventory,” said Todd Teresi, vice president of sales operations at Yahoo Inc. “Over time, it remains to be seen where this will go"... Mr. Teresi represents Yahoo in the wake of the online media giant purchasing 20 percent of the Right Media exchange.

[Yahoo!] It also struck a deal to set up a remnant ad exchange, part of a 20 percent investment made in Right Media. It hopes the auction channel will draw in new display advertisers and increase demand for remnant ad space.

With Yahoo scheduling the full launch of its advertising platform for early 2007, the company’s deal to grab a chunk of Right Media seems to come at an ideal time. Not only will this give Right Media a solid opportunity to integrate its Right Media Exchange into Yahoo’s new advertising game plan, but on the flip side, Yahoo gets another opportunity to extend its advertising platform and overcome the image that Panama could just be “rebranded Google.”

Yahoo made a strategic investment in Right Media, one of the online “Adsdaqs,” exchanges where ad impressions are auctioned to the highest bidder. Yahoo took a 20 percent stake as part of a $45 million series B round of financing.

Yahoo said it would begin participating in a marketplace to auction off extra ad placements, part of an effort to increase the amount of money it receives for its inventory. The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet giant will participate in the Right Media Exchange, a marketplace for ad networks to bid on placements, and invest in the company operating it. Yahoo took a 20 percent stake in Right Media, part of a $45 million Series B funding round that included Redpoint Ventures.

With all eyes on Google as the ad-auction pioneer, Yahoo has quietly taken a 20% share in Right Media Exchange, an online auction-based system for selling ad space. Long a place for brand advertisers interested in reaching people on the web, the stake will help Yahoo better sell its less-premium advertising.

New York based alternative advertising meta-network Right Media closed $45 million in Series B funding today. The service auctions ad space between multiple ad networks in real time. Yahoo! lead the round and will take 20% of the company.

It also purchased a 20% stake in the Right Media Exchange, a company that allows advertisers to bid in real time on ad impressions. Using Right Media, an advertiser can bid to place ads on pages that are about a particular subject, such as music, or on pages with certain words. The advertisers who offer the highest price for pages with those particular criteria have their ads placed on the page until the moment they are outbid.

Right Media, which operates the Right Media Exchange ad marketplace, has launched a white-label technology platform for large publishers, dubbed Publisher Media Exchange, allowing them to create their own ad auctions for undersold inventory. The technology's users, which include Fox Interactive Media, Tickle, LookSmart, and Six Apart, can set up auctions for their advertisers to bid on the ad space on individual pages.

Right Media has launched a new solution for large online publishers to create their own white label media exchange to sell non-premium inventory more efficiently and maximize revenue. Announced at the iMedia Brand Summit in Henderson, Nevada, Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) empowers publishers to consolidate inventory on their own auction-based platform and enable advertisers and ad networks to compete for every impression in real-time.

Right Media's new Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) tool allows sites to bulk together non-premium impressions and sell them in a real-time auctions. Fox, Tribune, LookSmart, Tickle, and Six Apart, will be among the major sites using the customizable PMX to sell extra impressions to advertisers and ad networks on their sites.

Right Media (of Right Media Exchange fame) has launched a private-label bidding platform for publishers Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) to auction “non-premium inventory” (stuff they have difficulty selling well). It enables the inventory to be more efficiently offered to a larger buying pool, including those in the the Right Media Exchange if publishers so desire.

Tribune, LookSmart and Fox Interactive Media are wringing every last cent from their advertising space through a new product called Publisher Media Exchange that will auction off spots of lower-value ad space, like archive pages. Auctioning off excess inventory isn't a new idea, but this brings the auction platform in house. And it's only sensible to monetize that long tail.

Right Media launched a white-label version of its media auction technology designed to let large publishers run their own auctions of remnant ads. Fox Interactive Media, LookSmart, Six Apart, Tickle and Tribune will use Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) to auction off their non-premium inventory.

Looking to increase ad revenue and keep more of that money for themselves, a number of major media publishers are set to begin using a product called Publisher Media Exchange from Right Media to auction off ad space on older news pages.

Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) is a white-label version of the Right Media Exchange (RMX), a platform that allows publishers to offer up remnant inventory, which ad networks will buy on behalf of their advertisers. The exchange, which now has approximately 11,000 buyers and sellers, is designed to minimize the number of middle men in each transaction, and route transactions to the ad network offering the highest ROI.

Right Media, home of the Right Media Exchange, has launched a solution for online publishers that enables them to create their own white label media exchange to sell non-premium inventory. The Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) allows publishers to consolidate inventory on their own auction-based platform while advertisers and ad networks compete for impressions in real-time.

Fox Interactive Media, Tribune and LookSmart are among major media owners who will auction non-premium advertising space to generate more revenue from existing Web pages.  The publishers will use a product called Publisher Media Exchange from Right Media that they can adapt to their own Web sites.

Their latest concept, the Publishers Media Exchange (PMX)--announced Monday--has already attracted the attention of blogging software hub Six Apart, search site LookSmart, and social quiz site Tickle, among others. And PMX clients have access to Right Media's main offering, the still-in-beta Right Media Exchange, which has over 11,000 buyers and sellers participating.

PMX enables publishers to consolidate inventory, and provide an automated way for advertisers and ad networks to compete for the cost per impression for banner ads and text links. In addition, PMX gives publishers direct access to Right Media's network of advertisers.

Right Media, which operates Right Media Exchange, on Monday launched a solution to allow online publishers the ability to create their own so-called "white label" media exchanges to sell non-premium ad inventory. Right Media said Tribune Co. newspaper were among the first to implement Publisher Media Exchange (PMX). The launch was announced at the iMedia Brand Summit in Henderson, Nev.

The last few months have brought changes in the way online ad inventory can be bought and sold-- in addition to going straight to publishers or working with ad networks there are now ad exchanges. As these changes begin to get traction they may have a broad impact on the industry. In an effort to get a better handle on what these changes are, I invited three people to sit down for a roundtable discussion: Michael Walrath, CEO of Right Media, William Urschel, CEO of AdECN, and Chas Edwards, VP of sales and market development for Federated Media. Each of these companies -- and there are certainly others -- has a new approach to buying and selling online ad inventory.

RMX Direct uses an accessible web based application that makes it as easy as possible for bloggers and other niche content providers to find the best possible advertising for their site, at the best price.

New York based Right Media has launched a beta version of a new advertising system that lets website publishers participate in multiple ad networks and automatically display ads from whichever network will pay the highest price per impression for their ad space in real time bidding. The service, called RMX Direct, also has a filtering system to prevent malware distribution through ads and enforces publisher criteria.

Simply put, you put RMX Direct on your blog instead of an ad call to whomever you are currently using to serve ads (adsense, ypn, burst, blogads, federated media, etc) and they call those services for you and act as a broker to determine what ad network is going to give you the biggest CPM for every single page you serve.

Right Media, home to the Right Media Exchange service, today rolled out the beta of its Media Guard tool. The first in Right Media’s next generation of offerings, Media Guard aims to significantly reduce the growing threat from dangerous applications and software transferred through online ads. Additionally, the system utilizes a detailed manual classification system to monitor creative content.

Online media exchange firm Right Media today will unveil a product that scans ads for viruses or other malware. In a test last month, the product scanned more than 50,000 ads and discovered 17 types of hidden viruses.

Media Guard protects against viruses, trojans, initiation of Active X and exit pop-ups. Additionally, publishers can select from 160 attributes and classifications to apply to creatives.

On Monday, Right Media opened a private beta test of RMX Direct, an alternative ad exchange for blogs and smaller publishers that sell their inventory through advertising networks such as Burst Media or Tribal Fusion. Twenty publishers are participating in the test phase.  Instead of having to manage relationships with several ad networks, publishers can use a single log-on/interface to auction all their inventory to the seven networks participating.

Right Media offers automated real-time online auctioning for ad spaces, bypassing traditional ad agencies and increasing market transparency. According to RM, its platform now includes 11,000 ad networks, advertisers and publishers, trading about two billion impressions daily.

Right Media has launched the Right Media Exchange, an open media exchange featuring more than 11,000 ad networks, advertisers and publishers.  The company says their open media exchange gives participating marketers equal access to media in an open, fair market and enables competition to drive more value for both sides of every transaction.

The Right Media Exchange (RMX) auctions every ad in real-time to the highest bidder. Online ad networks participate in the exchange by putting their publishers' remnant inventory up for sale, and by buying relevant inventory on behalf of their advertisers. Publishers and advertisers don't participate directly in RMX, but are instead represented by ad networks.

Right Media offers advertisers the option to bid on non-premium, or commodity ad space, for display or banner ads, said Michael Walrath, chief executive of Right Media.

In the Right Media Exchange, every ad is auctioned in real-time to the highest bidder, and every participant is given equal access to media, thus fostering competition to drive more value for both sides of the transaction. Networks, advertisers, and publishers can all maximize performance, results, and revenue, while technology providers can market and distribute technology solutions to a broad community of users.

Right Media, which began life as an ad network, is trying to expand its "exchange" — essentially an open marketplace for buying and selling ad inventory. They argue that the Internet needs a more "transparent" platform for buying and selling ad inventory (than what Google and Yahoo! currently offer) and liken their exchange to the emergence of the NYSE. The market wants something like this and, clearly, smaller networks will join.

In what seems to be an eBay for ad space, a company called Right Media is starting a service that lets companies bid on advertising space. Rather than contracts setup or advertising being placed via 3rd party agencies, a company would directly bid for particular space on a particular site. Seem strange? To many, it seems fair, especially considering that the majority of online ad agencies primarily use rotating ad space that could provide unfair to some companies.

The Right Media Exchange, an open marketplace for online advertisers and publishers, saw rapid growth in 2005 as monthly transaction volume rose from $3 million last May to its peak at just under $12.5 million in January and around $12 million for March.

The time is — finally — ripe for electronic ad marketplace, whether it’s Madison Avenue’s Adsdaq, Google’s AdWords platform, Adify, Right Media, AdECN or something still to be determined.

The Right Media Exchange is trading more than 2 billion impressions daily. Walrath wanted to keep Right Media under the radar, because the market has resisted the concept. That is, until the advertisers’ coalition led by Julie Roehm of Wal-Mart called for a $50 million test and riled up the industry.