Yahoo Serving Images in Sponsored Search Listings from Search Engine Journal reports the Yahoo Directory is displaying image ads near the sponsored results. The images appear on the left hand side of each sponsored result within the directory pages. The images appear to be hosted by ImageAdvantage and draw your eyes to those ads.

For example, the NY Internet Consultants category now looks like this:

Loren points out that Yahoo forbids placing images near Yahoo Publisher Network ads. They do this so that people are not overly encouraged to click on those ads. This is not the first time Yahoo tested placing images near their sponsored results. I reported a while back that Yahoo placed images near their contextual ads in the past.

I have asked Yahoo for a statement, but have yet to hear back anything at the time of publishing this article. I will postscript when I hear from Yahoo.

Postscript: I received a statement from Yahoo, here it is:

We continually test new systems and products to improve our advertising services. That said, there isn’t anything further to report on at this time.

Related Topics: Yahoo: Search Ads

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz