Paid listings on Right Side? Did I see right?

What happened on Thursday?

[Corey]

On Thursday, June 19, 2003 I noticed that the paid listings (fed by Overture) were showing up on the right side of Yahoo. They looked very similar to the way that Google displays its paid listings.

Did anyone else notice this? It does not seem to be happening again today (Friday).

Does anyone have an inside scoop on this?
Is Yahoo thinking of going this route instead?

To those of you that work heavily with PPC (like I do), do you see that this could present a significant change in the way you advertise on Overture?

Corey

[edited by: JamesR at 6:10 pm (utc) on June 20, 2003]
[edit reason] please, no signatures, thanks [/edit]

[msr986]

These SERP's have been showing up for several months.

More reading:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Only time will tell if Y! actually adopts these SERP's permanently.

[Corey]

Thanks for the link. Interesting reading.

I definitely think that a change like that would greatly affect PPC if they kept it up. Currently my clients are spending 90% on Google AdWords and 10% on Overture. The returns are much stronger on Google for them.

However, if more ads were to start showing up on Overture, we may be more interested in purchasing some terms a little lower on the list. (That is, if they started showing up on the first SERP on Yahoo.)