Yahoo! Inc. announced it reached a definitive agreement to acquire online advertising solutions provider Interclick, Inc. for $9 per share for a total of about $270 million.

Interclick is a company founded in 2006 that was listed at NASDAQ in 2009. Using its proprietary Open Segment Manager (OSM) tecnology it developed, the company analyzes large amounts of data from many sources to determine the value of advertising space taking into account the advertisers needs.

Less than two months ago, Yahoo! fired its CEO Carol Bartz, replaced by the company’s Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse, but for him it’s still an interim office because the company hasn’t yet chosen a definitive CEO. From the moment of that change, Yahoo! started exploring various possible strategies for the future, including the sale of the company.

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During the weeks there have been a number of rumors about possible buyers. Google could be a candidate as a buyer because it would further strengthen its position as a search engine but there may be problems with the antitrust laws. Microsoft is another candidate because Yahoo! uses Bing for search results so it may want to buy the company, although for much less than it offered in 2008, to avoid the risk of it being acquired by Google. There are also rumors about possible Asian companies such as Alibaba Group interested in buying Yahoo! but the American protectionism over its big companies could prevent a such a deal.

Despite the negative events and rumors of a possible sale, Yahoo! remains a portal with a lot of visitors. Consequently, the acquisition of a company that can improve the management of advertising space sale has been done ​​to increase the revenue from that sector and given the figures of the transaction it’s clearly a long term move. The problem was that Yahoo! was selling advertising spaces to ad resellers who sold them to advertisers at much higher prices. The technology developed by Interclick should allow the company to figure out the actual value of its advertising spaces and sell them at higher prices.

Yahoo! is trying to improve its situation and that’s positive whether the company is looking for a buyer or it wants to keep on working on its own. This acquisition isn’t a landmark move for a company that has been a pioneer among search engines and for some time the most important of them but after so many problems at least it seems to be dictated by a clear idea for the future.