As Jerry started Yahoo from the very beginning, he wants to build a media company. He becomes a media star. He invited the current Yahoo CEO from Hollywood, who is still commuting between Hollywood and Silicon Valley on a private jet on every weekend. The Yahoo logo was turned into purple. Yahoo never had its own search engine. Yahoo bought all kinds of companies related to media, Flickr, del.icio.us, and the most recent rivals.com. Yahoo is all focused on media. Yahoo argues that users stay on Yahoo longer than most other sites. At least this was the case before myspace.com and Fackbook shew up. By this standard, Yahoo probably could sell the most expensive banner ads. The issue here is who will click on that banner. This is the difference between Cost Per Click and Cost Per Impression.
However, Google is continually buying ad companies, including the largest one, doubleclick. Google is focused on ads and contents. It bought jotspot, YouTube, and other ad technology companies. It is building web office to help people write and convert content onto the web. Then Google can search it, index it, and sell keywords.
Goolge wants to become the gate to the information bank while Yahoo strives to be the media king on the internet. I haven't researched it but my impression is search ads increase dramatically while banner ads increases very slowly.
Those are just observations. It's hard to say which strategy will win the race. Where is Microsoft? It probably has enough power and resource to try both.
