Yahoo, self advertising.

[Brett_Tabke]

I was at Yahoo for about 50-75pages worth (half hour) and I was amazed at the number of Yahoo banners for Yahoo I saw. Must have been 10-15. It has been a long time since I've seen that. Is it a new policy to fill defaults with Yahoo ads, or are they just in that kind of trouble?

[Czar]

Yahoo! is starting to experience problems similar to the rest of us. Some evidence of this can be found within the following article:
[msnbc.com ]

This article above outlines that while Yahoo! was keen to circumvent traditional advertisers during the net's financial heyday of 98-99, they are now desperate to strike up strong relationships with said agencies.

In addition to this, I heard from Robert of SI that one major brand-name portal (possibly not Yahoo!, but one whose business model is comparable) offered him millions of banner impressions for $0.35CPM! Now, obviously these would be low-quality 'filler' inventory, but a year ago an offer to buy ad space on a portal for that sort of rate would have been met with a hearty laugh, and a wave goodbye. ;)

In short, I think Yahoo! and the other big names will always retain greater CPM rates than those that are offered by the networks, but they're not completely insulated from the harsh realities of a punishing ad market.