Odd Yahoo Ad Format

What are these ads on Yahoo pages?

[OldManStrength]

Been noticing a different ad layout on Yahoo pages lately, namely on Yahoo News pages accessed from the the Yahoo homepage. The ads are basic text ads in pale colored boxes and read like YSM ads, (Widgets---Get your widgets here with free shipping) and then a display url at the bottom.

What are these? I have picked a few of them apart and lo and behold the exact wording is used in regular ppc ads that appear on Yahoo Search. Is this a third party offering? Is it a Yahoo experiment? Did I not search these forums long enough to see that this has been discussed to death? ;)

I am curious as they seem not to be content-related to the newstory at hand as I have seen ads for goji berries, cowgirl boots and a small chevy dealer in Illinois upon refreshes on the same news story referencing Somalia. Appreciate any input from those far wiser than I.

[edited by: OldManStrength at 10:18 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2007]