Yahoo has announced it plans to acquire online-advertising technology company Interclick for roughly $270 million.

Yahoo acquired the firm with the intention of addressing a long-standing problem, the Wall Street Journal writes: ad sellers that acquire d space on Yahoo sites and then resell it for a much higher price. The acquisition also comes as Yahoo–at least as the market widely believes–is primping itself for a sale, or based on the latest rumor reported i9n Bloomberg Business Week, is getting ready to sell off its Asian assets.

These events–the acquisition and a corporate sale or asset spin-off–aren't necessarily exclusive. The end result of the Interclick acquisition and a spin-off of its Asian assets, or even a spin-off and corporate sale would well be a smaller, tighter company entirely focused on online ad technology.

Once the Asian assets are sold off, a deep-pocketed suitor, such as Microsoft as rumors have suggested, would want to move in, N. Venkatraman, a business professor at Boston University, told the E-Commerce Times. "If Microsoft is interested in Yahoo," he said, "it is more for U.S. online display advertising, and the sale of the Asian assets may not matter much to it."