Yahoo plans on launching a new ad service on Wednesday according to a story from CNET and Yahoo has designed to compete with AdSense from Google. The small publisher market continues to grow and Yahoo wants some of that business currently pretty much exclusive to Google.
Google has enjoyed a relatively unchallenged niche with small and medium sized publishers thus far, but like any good competitor, Yahoo a market ripe for the picking. The niche will include a tremendous amount of bloggers and newsletter publishers and apparently will be entirely self service.
Blogging is growing force, perhaps the fastest growing online medium right now and Yahoo will force Google to become competitive as the two rivals go head-to-head in yet another venue.
According to CNET, the program will feature text ads based on site content and advertisers will pay when their ads get clicked. Whether graphic ads will also be offered wasn't mentioned and CNET said Yahoo didn't comment on this yet.
In the past Yahoo has only worked with the larger publishers with their Yahoo Search Marketing program in one of its various incarnations. To be in on that program, your site needs at least 30 million clicks a month. Most bloggers can't even come close that. This untapped market of small and medium publishers for Yahoo will certainly expand their revenue streams.
According to CNET, the biggest difference will come in the form of the human element, adding "human editorial" to the selection process versus Google, which is completely automated.
The Webmaster World forum has a thread on the matter and a number of comments showed a fair amount of excitement regarding the subject and what it means to small publishers. The obvious upside pointed out is better ads for your site, more focused and the higher pay scales for clicks. They thought the introduction of competition would be nothing but good for the publishers.
A commenter known as Gomer said, "Competition is great for everyone. Both Google and Yahoo will have to compete for publishers. This will encourage them to focus their ads better and pay publishers more. This will ultimately serve advertisers and the end user as well."
In any event, the WMW posters are right, competition will only make both programs stronger and will benefit everyone. Let's hope other companies begin coming out with similar programs and expand the market place even further.
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