Microsoft Thinking Of Testing Mouse Over Image Ads In Live.com Search Results

John Battelle has posted a screen capture from a presentation given by Gary Flake of Microsoft showing a new approach to search ads. The search ads on the Live.com search results have a little icon next to them, when you mouse over those icons, up comes a larger image or flash or interactive based ad.

When will this come to a search results page near you? I do not know but how will this impact one’s click through rate and conversions – that is the big question.

This implementation kind of reminds me of Ask.com’s Binoculars but is a lot less useful and a lot more annoying.