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Remember why Google AdSense became so popular in the first place? It was because the folks at Google had realized that flashing banners, animations and images don’t work that well in the context of a search result listing. Thus, they created very simple text-based ads that weren’t all that different from the search results itself; it worked great, and everyone (including Yahoo) had done pretty much the same thing.

Now, Yahoo thinks that this strategy has run its course, and they’ve introduced a new kind of search ads – Rich Ads. These enable publishers to add images, videos, and custom search boxes to their search ads – precisely the sort of thing that stopped working several years ago.

I’m not claiming that this is necessarily a bad move. Just like any other type of advertising, simple text ads can’t be the holy cash cow of search advertising forever; these things come and go, and Yahoo has probably decided that it’s time to bring the old trend back. If I were to judge by the picture on the left, courtesy of Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, I’d say that people won’t be too happy about having these in their search results.

Not even Yahoo is too sure about Rich Ads just yet, since advertisers can currently use them on an invitation-only basis. If the initial results are good, we can expect Rich Ads to be rolled out to everyone.

by Stan Schroeder

\\ tags: yahoo