Yahoo increases it's PPC offering

with image and video listings

[Yoshimi]

From Marketing Week [marketingweek.co.uk]

Yahoo is expected to announced today an upgrade to its paid search platform by integrating image and video results with listings

Rich Ads in Search will expand Yahoo’s results from basic text listings.

[engine]

Yahoo! adds video, images and custom links to search ads [ysmblog.com]

The Rich Ads in Search program is being shared with a small number of brand advertisers such as Pedigree and Esurance and agencies such as Razorfish. The program lets advertisers:

Post images and video, which can increase the branding impact of search advertising. Pedigree has added video to its campaigns, for instance.
Create deep links to relevant pages, which can help drive conversions directly from the Yahoo! search results page.
Include boxes within the listing that lets users search for their desired product or a store location directly without additional navigation. Esurance’s listing lets users enter their ZIP codes from the results page for insurance quotes.
Show their logo, which enhances user trust.
Rich Ads in Search is currently by invitation only, but we will update you as it opens up to more of our brand advertisers. In the meantime, start thinking of what your search ads could do for you.

[chinara]

It is interesting to see where this will lead to.

A small group of advertisers tested it in the fourth quarter of 2008 and saw click-through rates rise by as much as 25 percent. They’ve also seen improved brand exposure and conversion rates. (from yahoo blog)

This result could be so misleading. The key is “small group”

Lets imagine keyword mortgage, one person adds an animated gif with flashing low rate and his ctr rises as he is the only one and naturally draws more attention as his ad with an image now stands out, then the competition will add even flashier animated gif and so forth and the page will look like a banner farm drastically annoying the user.

[AjiNIMC]

Good experiment. I will see it working if

1) The videos can have call to actions with it. Because we will like to finish the conversation with some sales points.

2) Tracking ability for the videos.

3) PPT as a rich media (as it will be easy for us to create a new one and test it)

4) Need to think more about it but certainly a good experiment for the ad-blind-but-still-ad-consuming world.

Regards,
Aji Issac

[MrHard]

Hmmm...Maybe this is one of the reasons why Google acquired YouTube.

[CWebguy]

If Yahoo were smart, in order to compete with Google they would give publishers a bigger cut of their earnings. Just my two cents (Yahoo make it three ;)

lance