Yahoo! and Havas Have Something Up Their Sleeve

(MoneyWatch)  Via the good folks at ClickZ, Yahoo! signed a deal with powerhouse ad group Havas. From the article:

The initiatives are intended to support the company's mission to ease the process for creating and purchasing display ads, and in the process dominate the non-search digital ad market.

Yahoo said it will work with agency Havas Digital to develop a media "trading practice" using Yahoo's Right Media exchange as a backbone. In exchange, Havas said it will bring more ad buyers and sellers to Right Media's media marketplace. The relationship will also involve the creation by Havas of an outsourcing program based in India and Brazil that will use the Right Media Exchange as a backbone. Details about that initiative weren't available at press time.

"The combined capabilities will allow Havas Digital clients to execute highly segmented media buys on a mass scale," Havas Digital CEO Don Epperson said in a statement.

Which makes me curiouser than George about what exactly is going down with Havas and the Right Media Exchange. Does the outsourcing to India and Brazil suggest that there'll be some human-scale fine tuning being made in the media buys? Or is it furthering the trend of advertising work itself being outsourced to places where creatives bill significantly less? Yahoo! and WPP signed a similar deal a few weeks back, but there was no mention of outsourcing. Something to keep an eye on.