People familiar with Yahoo say that this week it told at least three retargeting companies — Criteo, TellApart, and ValueClick’s Dotomi — that it would stop selling them its “Class 2” remnant inventory, which the companies used to purchase on behalf of clients and essentially resell at a premium. The idea, theoretically, is that Yahoo will sell more of those ads itself.

The move follows the formation of an ad alliance between Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL, which is meant in part to decrease the amount of inventory those companies sell to third-party players like retargeters. Industry sources believe Yahoo’s U.S. team, led by Ross Levinsohn, intends to follow its retargeter ban by going after ad networks — a much larger group of outside players who buy and resell Yahoo’s inventory.

But so far Yahoo appears to be acting on its own when it comes to keeping its stuff away from outsiders. Neither AOL or Microsoft have made similar moves.

Yahoo declined to comment and I haven’t heard back from Criteo and ValueClick. TellApart CEO Josh McFarland offered this statement via email:

TellApart maintains a good working relationship with Yahoo, yet this approach to the ad marketplace would be increasingly opposite that of Google’s.

It was my team at Google that built the ecosystem around AdWords, and third parties fueled huge growth in search advertising revenue as a result. DoubleClick is now compounding that success with real time bidding and an open Ad Exchange, which offers full access to all owned properties and the Google Display Network. This approach stands in contrast to Yahoo’s.

Retargeters try to track Web users as they visit clients’ sites — usually retailers — and try to sell them related ads when they move to other properties. (Here’s an illustrated guide from Criteo about the process, though it doesn’t mention the part about Criteo buying ads on other properties).

They’re part of a larger trend in Web advertising that puts a greater value on who sees the ads, and pays less attention to where they see them — which has diminished the ability of Yahoo and other “premium” publishers to charge high prices for their inventory. Meanwhile, retargeters, ad networks and other outsiders have been able to buy cheap unsold inventory from Yahoo and others, and resell it at a premium.

The Yahoo-led coalition with AOL and Microsoft is meant in part to give those companies more control of their inventory, and eventually the ability to raise prices. And apparently Yahoo’s unilateral move this week is meant to do the same thing.

But there’s a fundamental catch-22 here: Reclaiming inventory will only work if Yahoo can sell it. And the reason that Yahoo was willing to hand it off to third-parties in the first place was because it couldn’t sell it.

Yahoo U.S. head Ross Levinsohn is trying upgrade his sales technology and staff with a variety of moves, including his recently announced deal to buy Interclick, though that deal won’t close for several months.

As a result, Greystripe, a mobile ad network purchased by ValueClick in April, says that it has seen travel-related mobile ad campaigns increase by nearly 50 percent over the past year.

In a study, it found that the overwhelming majority of iPad owners, or 91 percent, used their device for a travel-related activity. The data was collected from Greystripe’s 971 users on a network of iPhone (including the iPod touch), Android and iPad devices during June.

Specifically, it found that 47 percent of iPad users booked hotel rooms, which seems to coincide with the boom of applications catering to this activity.

I’ve written in the past about how travel companies are flooding the mobile app stores, including Expedia, Kayak, Priceline and even start-ups, like HotelTonight, which will find you a room the night you need it. What’s more, InterContinental Hotels Group, the massive hotel chain that includes Holiday Inn, told me it recorded $10 million in mobile revenues in April, jumping from only $1 million in the same period a year earlier.

Following closely after hotels, Greystripe said 37 percent of iPad owners used the tablet to book a flight; 28 percent have used it to make a restaurant reservation; and 24 percent have used it to rent a car.

Although Greystripe found that applications were not required, in fact, 69 percent of iPad users were more likely to use the mobile Web compared to 49 percent of iPhone and Android users.

The network will compete with Apple’s iAd and Google’s AdMob networks, and is available to iPhone and Android developers and publishers looking to monetize their games or applications through advertising.

It could be particularly powerful because it taps into AT&T’s thousands of local salespeople, who work directly with local pizza places, dry cleaners, movie theaters and restaurants across the country.

The mobile ad network joins AT&T Interactive’s existing properties, including search on the Web or mobile at YP.com. A separate subsidiary prints the yellow directory that is delivered to your doorstep. The company’s interactive revenues have an annual run rate of $1 billion.

As an example of how big this business is getting, last year Google disclosed that mobile ad sales were now at a $1 billion annualized run rate. Google’s business is international and consists of both search and in-app mobile advertising.

While AT&T would still have a lot of catching up to do, David Krantz, AT&T Interactive’s president and CEO, said in an interview that he’s hoping its ads result in higher click-through rates because they can target a person’s location with more relevant ads.

Based on a three-month trial, Krantz said prices and fill rates were falling somewhere in between Apple’s iAd at the high end and Google’s AdMob or Millennial Media at the lower end. In the trial, which included 750 million impressions, costs per click ranged between 25 and 30 cents.

“We have really high fill rates because of our coverage, and we are able to provide CPMs in between [Apple and Google], so we’ve had a lot of interest in the pilot … We are finding a ton of demand for what we do,” he said.

Most of the major ad networks also try to serve more relevant ads based on location, but oftentimes it is difficult if they don’t have the sales force. Greystripe was focused on regional advertising before it was purchased by ValueClick, and Where had also latched on to the idea, before it was acquired by eBay’s PayPal.

AT&T’s ads will appear in any application as long as a person has opted to share their location. If a consumer clicks on a banner, it will direct them to a landing page from inside that application that will include click-to-call information, directions, reviews and coupons.  (Note: AT&T Mobility customers will not be treated any differently from subscribers on other wireless networks.)

AT&T is also launching a daily deals service sometime soon, but it is not part of the launch at this time.

Advertisers who are already part of the YP local ad network will not pay more to participate. AT&T pays the publisher on a pay-per-click basis.

Two of the applications that participated in the beta were Pinger and Skout. In a release, Pinger said it achieved CPMs three times higher than with other ad networks serving ads that were not local.

Krantz said AT&T’s ad network was built in-house with the help of Plusmo, which it acquired in September 2009.

Previous investors AllianceBernstein, General Catalyst, Redpoint Ventures, Summerhill Ventures, Valhalla Partners and WPP participated in the newest funding round; the company says new investors came aboard as well, but won’t name them.

Much of the funding had previously been disclosed via a regulatory filing in April.

Jumptap is one of several well-funded mobile ad companies yet to be snatched up by a bigger player. But many have: Google bought AdMob, Apple bought Quattro Wireless, and last month ValueClick bought Greystripe for $70 million. Competitor Millennial Media, which raised its own big round in January, talks often about its ambitions to go public.

CEO George Bell joined the company less than a year ago; he had previously been a managing director at Jumptap backer General Catalyst.

HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson (pictured) said he was highly concerned about and disappointed by the Google algorithm changes, because so far ranking increases and decreases have not correlated with his own perceptions of high-quality HubPages content. But he said he’s waiting for the changes to stabilize, as they commonly do after such shifts.

(See our previous stories on reactions to the Google changes from Associated Content and Demand Media.)

Meanwhile, this week HubPages made a significant upgrade to its payments, bringing on ad networks including Tribal Fusion, AOL’s Advertising.com, Microsoft pubCenter, ValueClick and Glam Media. Previously the site had used Google AdSense and Amazon and eBay affiliate links. The company is also hiring its own ad sales team.

HubPages is treating its whole site as a publication with 46 million uniques, and sharing the higher revenue with its writers.

That means an effective average CPM of $2 to $3, up from CPCs usually in the cents, Edmondson said. In early tests, HubPages authors are reportedly making 60 percent more than their previous average daily earnings.

Historically, HubPages has had a more writer-friendly setup than competitors, giving contributors 60 percent of revenues, letting them choose their topics and even delete stories, and offering content management and optimization tools to maintain their topics on an ongoing basis.

The premium ad program is in invite-only beta for now, but Edmondson said he wanted to roll it out site-wide by June. With more writers and topics involved, Edmondson said he expected CPMs to be between $1 and $12.

HubPages, which has raised about $8 million in funding, last year grew traffic 120 percent to 46 million uniques and brought in revenues of $10 million. It has more than 1.2 million articles from 220,000 writers.

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Youssef Squali, an analyst at Jefferies & Co., this morning said that checks indicate that the top ad categories in Yahoo’s display segment are under pressure, and will likely cause second-quarter results to come in at the low end of expectations. Squali, who notes that the display business accounts for about 40 percent of Yahoo’s revenues, says there are indications of weakening ad spending in autos, financial services and consumer packaged goods.

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The WPP-24/7 Real Media deal follows Google’s recent acquisition of DoubleClick and Yahoo’s purchase of Right Media and puts to rest rumors that Microsoft was considering offering as much as $1 billion for 24/7 Real Media. Which begs the question: Has the software giant turned its attentions to aQuantive or ValueClick? Or has it concluded that there’s no reason to acquire an ad network when it already has a killer publisher ad server?