Yahoo Formalizes Rich Ads In Search, Text Ads Gain Images Or Video

After testing this for close to a year, Yahoo is set to formally announce Rich Ads In Search — a service that places images and videos into paid ads in Yahoo’s search results. The New York Times says the service will be announced formally on Thursday.

A search for Pedigree dog food brings up a video in the primary paid listing:

Other additions include images and search boxes inside paid ads. The NYT article says Yahoo is charging a monthly fee for Rich Ads In Search, and only “large, brand-focused advertisers” can use the service at this point.

If you’re thinking you’ve heard about this before, you probably have. We reported seeing videos in Yahoo paid ads as far back as last March, when it was apparently only being tested on a limited basis. In December we wrote about images and a search box in a paid ad for eBay.

In the interest of being complete, we should mention that Google has also tested video ads and image ads within the last year. And, almost two years ago, we reported that Microsoft was looking into mouseover image ads, too.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Postscript Barry Schwartz: Yahoo’s blog post is now live at the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog.