Flickr Testing Both Google AdSense and Yahoo Contextual Ads
Yahoo is testing both Google AdSense ads and Yahoo Search Marketing Contextual Ads on Flickr to possibly determine and compare the revenue generated by each contextual advertising network as part of Yahoo Search Marketing’s plans to unveil their own Yahoo Publisher’s advertising. Rumors have been circulating around the web since last February that Yahoo Search Marketing would soon be unveiling their own contextual advertising network which would compete with Google AdSense. Currently ContentMatch text advertisements are only shown on larger Yahoo partner sites such as CNN and Dogster.
When doing some searches on Flickr today I first noticed a Google Adsense ad strip to the left of the photo search results. Being that Flickr is now a Yahoo property, the presence of Google AdSense ads did catch my eye. After sifting through some other photo results, I then noticed that after refreshing my web browser that Yahoo was also showing text ads powered by Yahoo Search Marketing. The text advertisements are branded with “Ads by Yahoo!” at the top of the 120×600 ad strip.
At first I was doing searches related to Yahoo and noticing that the Ads by Yahoo ads were not showing results quite relevant to my search results. I then tried some other searches and found for the most part that while Yahoo ads were relevant to the site Flickr and its photo services, the Google AdSense ads were relevant to my search term and results. Is Yahoo testing its ad targeting functionality on Flickr? Is it comparing revenue and click thru percentage between Google AdSense and “Ads by Yahoo!”? The answers are unknown, but the live test and results are interesting.
