The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, involves a three-year traffic agreement under which Monster will become the provider of career and job content on the Yahoo (YHOO) homepage in the U.S. and Canada.

Obviously a smart move for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who has been trying to narrow the company’s focus to its core portal business–most recently by selling email technology provider Zimbra to VMware (VMW).

Now, if only Bartz can unload Yahoo Games and Yahoo Shopping.

The release, below.

Monster to Acquire HotJobs Business and Enter into Multi-year Traffic Agreement with Yahoo!
NEW YORK & MAYNARD, Mass., Feb 03, 2010 —— Monster Worldwide, Inc. (MWW 16.42, +0.38, +2.37%) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of Yahoo! HotJobs, a leading online recruitment website, from Yahoo! (YHOO 15.46, +0.29, +1.91%) for $225 million in cash. Monster and Yahoo! have also entered into a three year commercial traffic agreement, to take effect upon the closing of the acquisition, in which Monster will become Yahoo!‘s provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada. The traffic agreement calls for performance based annual payments calculated by clicks and expressions of interest, subject to annual floors and ceilings. In addition, the traffic agreement provides Monster with an exclusive right for a period of time following the closing of the acquisition to negotiate similar traffic agreements with Yahoo! properties on a global basis, including countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, subject to certain limitations.

“HotJobs with its significant customer base plus the traffic agreement are an ideal complement to Monster’s innovative recruitment solutions and global reach,” said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Monster Worldwide. “These agreements, combined with Monster’s career Communities and our recently introduced 6Sense(TM) semantic search technology, will bring substantial new benefits for employers seeking more qualified candidates and job seekers searching for more relevant opportunities across a wider range of industries—globally.”

“Bringing together Monster and HotJobs creates even greater access and opportunities for both recruiters and job seekers,” said Hilary Schneider, EVP, Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO). “The transaction with Monster enables us to continue to provide an important service to our users through the traffic agreement. Yahoo! remains focused on its core businesses and delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers.”

Monster believes that the acquisition of HotJobs and the traffic agreement with Yahoo! will provide a number of benefits to jobseekers and employers, who today have more diverse competitive choices than ever before, and a value to all of its stakeholders, including its shareholders. These include:

Anticipated increase in job matches and search efficiencies–By bringing more diverse job and career opportunities, tools and resources together in one place, employers and job seekers will enjoy greater convenience and more precise search results and better matches with Monster’s patented 6Sense(TM) search technology and other innovative products.

Expected expansion of job seeker pool for employers–Monster will be able to offer its employers a significantly larger pool of candidates across diverse geographies and industries. Based on Media Metrix comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) reporting, last year HotJobs averaged 12.6 million unique visitors per month.

Expected expansion of the number of job postings across industries for job seekers–Through the combination of Monster and HotJobs job postings, job seekers will have access to more job opportunities in one place in those industries currently leading job creation, including healthcare, finance and insurance, retail, manufacturing, information and wholesale trade.

Broader reach anticipated for recruitment advertising through additional media alliances and reseller agreement–With the addition of HotJobs’s network of more than 600 daily and weekly newspapers, Monster’s alliances with local papers will grow to a total of approximately 1,000, giving Monster reach in all 50 states. The additional newspaper alliances, through their online and print classified ads, will further Monster’s current strategy of connecting job seekers with smaller, local businesses, particularly in healthcare, education, and skilled and hourly job categories.

Yahoo! will continue to manage its broader Newspaper Consortium (NPC) partnership, including providing both search and display advertising, content distribution, and its ad-serving platform, to newspapers in its NPC.

The transaction is subject to clearance under Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is currently expected to close sometime during the third quarter of 2010, subject to regulatory review. Monster expects to realize operating synergies from the acquisition and currently anticipates the transaction will be breakeven on a pro forma full year earnings in 2010 and accretive thereafter, inclusive of the costs incurred under the traffic agreement.

Stone Key Partners LLC and Bank of America Merrill Lynch acted as financial advisors to Monster in connection with this transaction. Allen & Company LLC provided a fairness opinion to Monster’s Board.

What exactly did Adconion buy? Some of Joost’s technology, as well as its trademark, and about a dozen of the company’s remaining 25 employees, a spokeswoman says.

So what does that leave? Does any part of the original Joost survive as an operating company? “I believe so,” says the spokeswoman, who is going to get back to us about that.

Price? Your guess is as good as mine. But I’m guessing it’s not going to be very much, and nothing close to what investors like Sequoia, Index and Viacom (VIA) were hoping when they plowed $45 million into the company more than two years ago. Index, by the way, is also an investor in Adconion and led an $80 million C funding round in February 2008.

In any case, this is all a matter of “i” dotting and “t” crossing, as Joost has officially been in hospice mode since June, when the company laid off most of its employees and replaced CEO Mike Volpi. Prior to that, Volpi and his investors had been trying to broker a sale of the company, hoping that they could convince a big infrastructure player like Comcast (CMCSA) or Time Warner Cable (TWC) to bail it out.

No dice, though Time Warner Cable did end up hiring some technical help from Joost.

ADCONION MEDIA GROUP ACQUIRES JOOST ASSETS

New Capabilities Provide Advertisers, Content Owners and Publishers with an End-to-End
Cross-Channel Video Solution

SANTA MONICA, CALIF. – NOVEMBER 24, 2009 — Adconion Media Group (www.adconion.com), the largest independent global audience and content network, announced today that it has acquired certain assets from privately-held Joost, the online video service. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Video is a top priority for our company, and through the acquisition of the Joost assets we will be able to provide advertisers, content owners and website publishers with an end-to-end global video platform and cross-channel video and display ad-serving solution,” said Tyler Moebius, CEO, Adconion Media Group. “This acquisition immediately brings additional scale and content to the Adconion video pre-roll network for clients who are looking for a safe, cost-effective alternative to achieve the maximum value of online video advertising. We’ll also continue to operate Joost.com, providing clients with a destination site to showcase and distribute their branded entertainment content.”

In June, Joost announced a change in its business strategy to focus on providing white-label video platforms, and Adconion plans to pursue this strategy. On Friday, Adconion announced its first long-term licensing partnership as the exclusive display and video ad-serving solution for the Goldbach Media Group in Europe.

The acquisition of Joost assets adds many dimensions to Adconion’s existing video services and further will solidify its position in the online video and content syndication market. Prior to the acquisition, Adconion offered targeted distribution of content, including video and television commercials, to audiences around the world via Adconion.TV; as well as customized branded entertainment solutions for clients through its exclusive relationship with the digital studio RedLever. Through the Joost acquisition, Adconion.TV will add to its library of professionally-produced video content available for targeted pre-roll advertisements across 2,000 premium publishers.

Janus Friis, co-founder of Joost, said, “Over the past few months we have been actively exploring strategic options for Joost, and have concluded that the sale of certain of its assets to Adconion is in the best interests of Joost. Adconion has a strong technological platform and a compelling business model, and we believe that both businesses will benefit as a result of this acquisition.”

A leader in advertising innovation, targeting and distribution, Adconion reaches nearly 300 million unique users on a monthly basis. Prior to the Joost acquisition, Adconion was serving more than 80 million video streams per day to targeted audiences across 2,000 global websites.

To date, the company–which makes the leading open-source ad serving software, catering to about 30,000 Web publishers on 100,000 Web sites–has raised $30.8 million. “We raised $15.5 million at the end of 2007 and still had a chunk of that left, so we didn’t have to raise money,” OpenX CEO (and former Yahoo Senior VP) Tim Cadogan told The Deal. “But if it’s generally true that it makes sense to raise money when you don’t need it, in this environment, it is triply true.”

Quadruply true when you’re competing with the likes of Google’s (GOOG) Double Click and Yahoo’s (YHOO) Right Media, which dominate the Internet advertising market in which OpenX plays.

That’s the conclusion Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield reached in a research piece today on News Corp. “While everyone is blaming social networking as the culprit for Google’s MySpace monetization problems, the real problem is Google itself and its search algorithms for social networking,” he asserts.

Read the rest of this post

YouTube’s latest API offerings allow anyone building a Web site or software application that is connected to the Internet to upload videos straight to YouTube; let users comment, rate and favorite the videos; and customize and control the Flash player in which the videos are played. This can be used in conjunction with the existing APIs, which launched last year and which provide the ability to view videos on other sites and to search for videos on YouTube.

“The enhancements to the YouTube APIs and Tools offering are free and easy to use, giving YouTube users yet another way to engage the world of video and actively participate in the YouTube community wherever they are, whenever they want.”

Of course, these enhancements also give YouTube and, by extension, Google (GOOG), another way to engage the world of advertising. In the API’s terms of service, YouTube reserves the right to serve ads through a publisher’s API Client, but prohibits publishers from selling their own. Two relevant excerpts from the TOS:

I. Definitions
“API Data” means any data or content, including but not limited to YouTube video content, obtained from YouTube using any YouTube API, including advertising content that YouTube may, in its sole discretion, provide along with or insert in data or content obtained from YouTube using the YouTube API.”

4. Commercial Use. You agree not to use the YouTube API for any prohibited commercial uses, which include the following actions taken without YouTube’s express approval:

• the sale of the YouTube API, API Data, YouTube video content or related services, or access to any of the foregoing;
• use of the YouTube API for the primary purpose of deriving revenues from your API Client, such as advertising or subscription revenue or the sale of copies of the API Client;
• the sale of advertising, sponsorships or promotions targeted to, within or on the API Client or YouTube video content.

Ah. So that’s how it is: YouTube doesn’t just broadcast you, it broadcasts advertisements as well.

UPDATE: YouTube product manager Jim Patterson tells TechCrunch that the API is open to YouTube Partners, who will share in the advertising generated by their players.

We are not introducing any fundamentally new way to monetize. Any video that is uploaded through our API is treated exactly as on YouTube.com. In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.”

We would be disappointed in 2008-2009 if we don’t have a very significant position in the display-ad marketplace.

- Tim Armstrong, Google’s North American president for advertising and commerce

Looks like Google’s informal corporate motto, “Don’t Be Evil,” was assurance enough for the European regulators reviewing the company’s proposed merger with online ad-serving vendor DoubleClick.

The European Commission this morning approved Google’s (GOOG) $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, clearing the way for the unprecedented combination of their advertising services, as well as their vast troves of data about consumer behavior on the Internet.

In a statement, the EC said the deal would be unlikely to have harmful effects on consumers and can proceed without conditions. “The Commission found that the merged entity would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at marginalizing Google’s competitors, mainly because of the presence of credible ad-serving alternatives to which customers (publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch, in particular vertically integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL,” the EC explained. “The market investigation also found that the merged entity would not have the incentive to close off access for competitors in the ad-serving market, mainly because such strategies would be unlikely to be profitable.”

Less than two hours after the EU granted its approval, Google announced that the deal had closed. Google CEO Eric Schmidt declared himself “thrilled.” As well he should be: Shares of Google, which have lately been trading down, were up by as much as $18 this morning, or more than 4%, at about $431.