November 28, 2007

Yahoo Offers Contextual Advertising In PDFs; Yes, PDFs

Duncan Riley

21 comments »

Yahoo and Adobe have teamed up to give publishers the ability to offer contextual advertising as part of their PDF document downloads.

Users upload their PDFs to Yahoo’s ad network and then Yahoo hosts the document for download and serves up contextual advertising in a panel to the right of the given document’s content.

According to CNet, sites participating in the current closed beta include IDG’s InfoWorld, Wired, Pearson’s Education, Meredith Corporation and Reed Elsevier. No word as yet as to when it might be broadly available, although if it is eventually rolled out as part of the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) it will be a US residents only service.

On one hand contextual advertising in PDFs probably falls into the “why didn’t they think of that before” category, but on the other hand there’s probably a reason this is a new concept, because I can’t see there being a stampede of people wanting to use the service. It will be interesting to see however whether the ads convert, and it may provide an additional revenue stream for ebook sellers and similar online users and creators who regularly provide PDF downloads to visitors.

Sphere It

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Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Yahoo Offers Contextual Advertising In PDFs; Yes, PDFs

November 28th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

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November 30th, 2007 at 6:25 am

Comments

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Mathilda

November 28th, 2007 at 9:34 pm

Ads in PDF are a good idea.

Yahoo should also expand their Yahoo Publisher Network beta to publishers whose sites’ language is not english.
Angela Hayden

November 28th, 2007 at 9:54 pm

I hate downloading PDFs and always get ticked off when I accidently click on a pdf link.

It’s also so easy to crack into a pdf document and reupload to internet. There’s gonna be alot of fun with this.
Dubai Trader

November 28th, 2007 at 10:33 pm

Finally!
Chad

November 28th, 2007 at 10:39 pm

Reed Elsevier is a major supplier of databases of scholarly journal articles (which cost big bucks), which are often in pdf format. I wonder if they intend on dropping contextual ads into those online publications.
Spandana

November 28th, 2007 at 11:42 pm

is there an example of such hosted doc? a link?
thinkingSage

November 28th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

No, obviously if you are paying for a .pdf it will not have ads running in it.

But if you are distributing a free art magazine in .pdf format instead of donating $10,000 of your own money for a print run, ads like these might be nice.
Duncan Riley

November 29th, 2007 at 12:18 am

Spandana
Cnet has an example, link in the post.
Mahesh

November 29th, 2007 at 1:42 am

Hi Duncan Riley,

I thought that idea previously. And here it is another idea i had for PDF: Do you think integrating Light Weight Videos and PodCast in to PDF a better solution.

Suppose if i have downloaded PHP 5 tutorial and I also looking for corresponding Video in to that PDF only. So that i can do it easily: Theoretically as well as practically.
Duncan Riley

November 29th, 2007 at 1:58 am

I just got fucked by a dude in the parking lot.

It was great
stone

November 29th, 2007 at 4:47 am

Yahoo is terrible at placing ads anywhere off their site AND their contextual ad technology is a joke. Let’s address the real issues - people!
Pietro Watanabe

November 29th, 2007 at 6:54 am

I wonder if, you can even use the pdf if you are not connected to the internet to allow for that dynamic ad effect? Advertisers should watch out though, because if their efforts become too invasive there could be a serious backlash. Even now I ridicule TV ads that are repeated so often by a scatological mangling of their message.
Ken Teegardin

November 29th, 2007 at 7:54 am

This is especially good new for Coldfusion developers since CF8 allows dynamic creation of PDFs. The could allow for several new business models. If only Yahoo could get more advertisers. Yahoo will be crushed by Google if they don’t focus on bringing in more advertisers.
Tim Marman

November 29th, 2007 at 8:03 am

First thing that immediately jumps out here are the ability for authors to offer free, ad-based e-books in PDF. Not revolutionary, but still nice, and for Yahoo it’s a way to compete and offer something that AdSense doesn’t (yet).
Steve

November 29th, 2007 at 9:29 am

gee thats great, more marketing noise to mentally block out when I’m looking for information.
Dedy

November 29th, 2007 at 10:33 am

From the Cnet screenshot it seems ads are being served through Adobe Acrobat. In that case pdf files viewed on third party pdf readers like Apple Preview would probably remain ad-less
ReformedTechie

November 29th, 2007 at 11:33 am

“No, obviously if you are paying for a .pdf it will not have ads running in it…”

Yes, I’m sure that’s what they said about cable TV, too.

Even if your PDF doesn’t have ads in it, the mere *capability* of contextual advertising (part of every PDF reader) means that the PDF reader has to be able to “phone home” and tell $MEGACORP what you are reading.

No, I can’t see any problems with this at all.

I’m going back to abaci and stone tablets. Who’s with me?
Shahar Nechmad

November 29th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

I’m not sure about PDF files, but almost a year ago I said that advertising should get into the enterprise.
Think about it - Will small business wouldn’t prefer to get an Enterprise portal like SPS for free instead of paying $20,000? For that all they would need to agree is see google text ads near the search results on the portal.
These ads could also get a very high CPM as basically you know what enterprise the ads are shown in, which could make them highly targeted.

Shahar Nechmad
CEO, NuConomy
http://www.nechmads.com
NickeyD

November 30th, 2007 at 12:51 am

PDF copyright-infringment suits, PDF click-fraud suits…sounds like fun to me.
Spandana

November 30th, 2007 at 1:30 am

probably not a good idea. PDFs were meant to be off limits for webby stuff. even URLs within PDF docs seem weird, and ads are even more alien.

PDFs probably are beyond their utility lifespan of distributing static info. adobe and yahoo are best served in coming up with clever ideas on flash instead.