Shanda (NSDQ: SNDA) Online, the ad and content-serving arm of Shanda Interactive, has reeled in Yahoo alum Dr. Jing Zhu as its new CTO. Zhu spent eight years with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), most recently serving as a senior director of the team that developed its contextual ad-targeting platform; the company rolled out a suite of advanced targeting options—including search retargeting and more “advanced” contextual targeting—earlier this year.

Zhu’s defection comes amid news that Yahoo is pulling the plug on its Direct Media Exchange, the self-serve ad-targeting unit of Right Media geared toward smaller publishers (via AdExchanger). Prior to the contextual ad team, Zhu spent five years as head of Yahoo Mail’s engineering team. Release.