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In an exclusive interview with Media Week, Coppel said that the expense of running online campaigns was far too high compared to other media.

He said that offering advertisers inventory across BlueLithium's network of sites, as well as Yahoo!'s properties, was part of an industry trend to make it cheaper for advertisers to run online ad campaigns.

Coppel said: "The value of being able to go to an advertiser and say that you can buy through me, a one-stop shop, and they don't have to go through 500 different websites, is huge.

"The cost of doing business in online relative to TV and print is still one of the big problems we're trying to solve. It is still expensive and the same standards are not in place. There are a lot more steps to take, and the more we can do to make it cheaper for agencies and advertisers to do business the better."

Coppel said that the acquisition of BlueLithium was not an admission that Yahoo!'s in-house behavioural targeting tools had failed and instead highlighted how they would complement each other.

"Once the acquisition closes, we'll combine all of our insights and targeting technologies," he said. "Behavioural targeting is the fastest growing part of online advertising globally. It's working really well with advertisers and BlueLithium knows that business really well."

Yahoo! buying BlueLithium is part of a summer shopping frenzy in online media that has seen more than $10bn splashed out by Google, Microsoft, WPP and Yahoo! combined.

Coppel said the market was acquisition-friendly because the growth in online display advertising was very healthy.

"Everyone wants a piece of that," he said. "All of our experience shows that when you apply science such as search or analytics, the returns are very significant. If you look at the technologies that have been applied to display advertising compared to search, there is a big difference. A lot of it is about improving the science behind display advertising."

Next week: Toby Coppel profile.