Earlier this week, Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) Jerry Yang and Sue Decker pitched IAB attendees about the Advertising Public Exchange, or APEX, as it’s called—the ad platform that they say will revolutionize online advertising. Decker even compared it to moving from black-and-white TV to color but the presentation was pretty short on detail—it will go public sometime in the second half of the year, there will be a number of releases over several years. Decker did write about it for the company’s official blog but still in outlines and no mention of its working name, APEX. (Another example: it’s “as different to current advertising platforms as the DVR was to VCRs).

The NYT’s Saul Hansell picked up some intelligence from Hilary Schneider, EVP-global partner solutions, and much more from a Yahoo publicist, who confirmed that Yahoo plans to take on DoubleClick, waiting for regulatory approval to be acquired by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), both from the publishing side and the advertising side.

-- Schneider: The key benefit to the 500-plus Newspaper Consortium would be the ability for publishers to have more pages on which to sell ads.

-- DoubleClick: The whole statement is in Saul’s post. APEX (again, name not used) will include both sides of DoubleClick “plus the ability to target and cross-sell and run campaigns across the network, plus major leaps in ease of use and removal of friction.”

As usual with Yahoo, no matter how wonderful in concept and tests, the proof will be in actual implementation—and matching the delivery to the promise.

• Yahoo’s Yang, Decker Tout Apex Program, Downplay Microsoft At IAB Conference