Despite Yahoo's plans to introduce its revamped search advertising platform in the third quarter, the company does not expect it to make a dent in revenue numbers in 2006, Yahoo executives said on Wednesday, Reuters reports. "We don't expect a financial contribution this year," CFO Sue Decker is quoted as saying at the company's annual analyst meeting. "We are looking more toward 2007." Decker said the company's outlook of 24-31 percent growth this year remains unchanged, but that in the longer term Yahoo's growth would be faster than the internet industry's as a whole.

Yahoo execs also said their new ad system is better than competing products - it is designed to let marketers target prospects not only by the search terms people use but also by their demographics, location and what they do on other areas of the Yahoo network, CNET writes.

"We're exposing more data about the quality of advertisers' listings than any other competitor," Tim Cadogan, vice-president of search, is quoted as saying. The system "shows on a five-point scale how well an ad is performing," as well as which user queries indicate explicit or implied intent to shop, he said.

Moreover, execs said Yahoo can leverage the large numbers of registered users and broad network of services and sites to improve its advertising sales.