Yahoo unveiled its new advertising management platform today in New York before a crowd of analysts, advertisers, and the press. Renamed APT, this platform is one of the lynchpins behind the newspaper alliance. APT promises to put publishers on the same management system, streamlining online advertising for more efficient and targeted buys.

On hand to officially launch APT was Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Yahoo President Sue Decker, Yahoo Executive Vice President Hilary Schneider, MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton -- and "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm.

This platform originally called Apex, then AMP, is a Web-based solution that allows advertisers to buy across multiple properties. (Go here for a look at the APT dashboard. Newspapers are the first to unroll APT followed by agencies, advertisers, and Yahoo.

For the 784 newspapers involved in the Yahoo alliance, AMP gives publishers the opportunity to sell into Yahoo local inventory (say Yahoo San Francisco) and for Yahoo to bring national advertisers across several newspaper properties. APT's big selling point is its ability to target advertisers, known in online parlance as behavioral targeting (BT).

BT gives newspapers more flexibility to sell audience as opposed to section (even online). The idea is that Yahoo can track how a user interacts with Yahoo content and the newspaper's content in order to target the most effective advertising. For example, someone who does a search for cruises on Yahoo, then reads an article about the Caribbean on the newspaper partner site, might be in the market to take a trip. Yahoo and the newspaper can serve that person appropriate cruise related advertising, whether they are in the travel section of the newspaper or checking stocks on Yahoo finance.

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