Yahoo Now Shows Ads In IM Services!

Well, being a webmaster I like to stay on the webmaster/online technology niche. This story really caught my eye, reason being is I use it a lot to get in touch with clients. Well, anyone that uses Yahoo Messenger would know they have pretty much always had ads in the buddy search part of the program. But now, they have also begun testing their ad services in the chat windows themselves!

Now one example of these ads is a credit card offer; Mastercard is the main one. It appears just above the text where you are chatting; to be honest it does get a little annoying. Apparently the ads are part of a campaign that was started in August and finishes at the end of this month; December.

From what I have heard, the two main reasons Yahoo has implemented this in their chat service is:
- It is just a test and they want to see whether it does any well.
- As Yahoo Messenger is a free service, they want to make sure it is profitable. No ads means they are just providing free software and get nothing in return; except users of course.

Also, Yahoo has mentioned that there are no public plans released as to what they will do with the results. They commented that they will take care of the results and apply appropriate action dependent on them.

The ads are known to only show once per day per user. The ads disappear as you scroll up the page/continue on with your conversation. Also, the ads are only being shown in Yahoo Messenger 7 and up.