I was sensing there was more to the Yahoo Newspaper deal, announced last week, than meets the eye; ConversionRater picked up on what I did not see.

"……Yahoo still lacked the powerful contextual source of data that the other players already had: newspapers. Fortunately, they had the agency relationships and credibility to help the newspapers realize the potential locked inside their context and user base. Look at the recent announcement in this context. Yahoo grabs a new behavioral data source to mine – and perhaps access to the inventory to resell behaviorally. How can Tacoda compete?

Take it to the next level. Why wouldn’t these publishers think about plugging in Yahoo’s entire ad serving capability? They’d get world class behavioral, contextual, inventory forecasting, and other technologies. They have leverage and credibility. They understand how to work with an existing sales force. Doesn’t that threaten 24/7 in their core market? Doesn’t this make it that much harder for Google and other networks? And what about MSN, who’s still not really in market?"

I’m not sure about this - but my "spider sense" …. or whatever it is …. was "tingling" and I could not figure out why.  Maybe Pat McCarthy got it right - and Yahoo figured this all out ahead of time - and made the right call.

Time will tell what comes out of this.