Yahoo and Adobe are bringing pay-per-click ads to Adobe’s Portable Document Format so that publishers can serve up ads inside PDFs distributed on Web sites and over e-mail that are contextually relevant to the content.

The text advertisements appear in a panel to the right of the content in the PDF and are subject matter matched using keywords and analysis of associated concepts. The ads are dynamic, meaning different ads can pop up at different times and clicking on an ad takes you to the advertiser Web site.

Publishers upload their PDF content into Yahoo’s ad serving system and then monitor the performance through Yahoo’s system. Publishers take a cut of the revenue from each click on the ads and Yahoo will split its share of the revenue per click with Adobe.

The service gives PDF publishers access to Yahoo’s network of advertisers and allows them to make money off the content without having their own sales force or having to do the ad insertion themselves, says Josh Jacobs, vice president of publisher solutions at Yahoo.

Publishers participating in the beta include IDG’s InfoWorld, which moved to a Web-only format earlier this year, as well as Wired, Pearson’s Education, Meredith Corporation and Reed Elsevier.

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Quality over quantity is usually the way in which we’d like to consider certain things in life, like clothes or the number of tracks on an album. And many of you out there would agree that this mantra applies to search queries as well.

Compete has just compiled a study that shows Yahoo’s superiority over Google when it comes to search results. While we all know that Google takes the cake for dominating the market in terms of search quantity, it’s good to look at quality every once in a while, too. What Compete looked at were the referrals from search queries done across Yahoo, Google and MSN/Live. An entire third of search queries performed on Google led to a dead end, meaning people weren’t clicking on a single search result.

This is the silver lining that so many search engine developers look to when creating their own way to navigate the semantic web. Nearly every search engine that’s come to our attention wants to find better results than Google, in a more efficient manner, whether it be through human interaction as with Cha-Cha and Mahalo, web user behavior as with Krillion, or a combination of both, as with Grayboxx.

It may be important to note here that Yahoo’s received higher honors than Google for consumer satisfaction as well. Does this mean that Yahoo is hands-down better than Google? Not really. It’s just another debatable factor for advertisers and businesses to look at when drawing up an online marketing plan.

Microsoft is preparing $50 billion takeover bid for Yahoo! to counter Google’s acquisition of online advertising giant DoubleClick.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have held informal merger talks in the past, but Microsoft has intensified efforts in light of the Google-DoubleClick deal, reports the New York Post.

Analysts value Yahoo! at $50 billion and estimate the deal would give Microsoft just over a quarter of the search advertising market, with Google-DoubleClick controlling two thirds.

Acquiring Yahoo! would significantly boost Microsoft’s capabilities to tackle the growing mobile market, but integration of operations could potentially present thorny cultural and technological challenges, says Datamonitor analyst Ri Pierce-Grove.

“Both Microsoft and Yahoo are strongly motivated to find ways to dethrone Google, the current market leader, and the combined mass of the two companies’ client and consumer bases could generate a viable competitor to Google on both the desktop and the mobile device,” Pierce-Grove says.

“Microsoft, which has not historically emphasised acquisition as a growth strategy, made headlines with a recent acquisition of TellMe which made the company’s intentions clear with regard to mobile search. In this context, acquiring Yahoo would significantly build out Microsoft’s capacities, and allow it to move more aggressively into an expanding new market.”

Instant messenging users who don’t like the overhead of downloading an IM client should checkout a new beta download called Yahoo Messenger for Web. The new service from Yahoo lets users partake in the text chat features of standard Yahoo IM but lacks file transfer, voice calls and web cam capabilities.

The web-based IM service is built using Adobe Flash technology and, like the download version, is interoperable with Windows Live Messenger and can be accessed from any of the four most popular browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

The browser-based Yahoo IM service, the first to hit the market from one of the major IM providers, frees users to acccess their IM accounts from any computer with Internet access and a browser installed.

Yahoo is touting the service as particularly applicable to users who don’t own a computer and for workers at companies that disallow downloads. The implication is that the service opens up the possibility for people in lower income brackets to partake in IM.

According to Yahoo, it intends to rollout Yahoo Messenger for Web initially to South East Asia, a region with high Internet penetration but low PC ownership. Cyber cafes are especially popular in places like the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand and Yahoo stands to gain a significant new audience from clientele without access to the net in their homes.

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt

In a bid for dominance in the mobile search space, Yahoo! Go 2.0 is now available for million of Windows Mobile devices including a deal to pre-load it onto HTC smartphones.

With Microsoft’s ‘Windows Mobile’ Smartphones an undoubted success in a world of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung cell phones, Yahoo! has decided that it’s a market they can’t afford to ignore, and as a result have made their Yahoo! Go 2.0 available for the Windows Mobile platform.

While the original version of Yahoo! Go was derided by some as hard to use, Yahoo! Go 2.0 is a much better version that delivers a truly useful mobile search – and more – experience.

Although already available for other brands of cell phone, there are over 175 Windows Mobile smartphones capable of running the new Yahoo! Go 2.0 software, with over 100 models on sale in stores today.

Marco Boerries, the senior vice president of ‘connected life, Yahoo!’, said that “Consumers have been clamoring for us to bring Yahoo! Go 2.0 to Windows Mobile devices since we launched the service less than two months ago. There are millions of mobile phones on the Windows Mobile platform in the market today and consumers with these devices want to use the most advanced, exciting services available. Our innovative Yahoo! Go 2.0 service finally brings the open Internet to the mobile phone and gives consumers the compelling experience they have been looking for.”

Microsoft are also naturally excited, with John O’Rourke, a general manager at Microsoft Corp. saying that “Yahoo! Go 2.0 includes an exciting set of features that helps people access their favorite Internet content while mobile. The combination of this application with a Windows Mobile powered device will allow our joint customers to get quick access to the Yahoo! experiences they want — from news to e-mail to photo sharing — all from a single, powerful device.”

Of course this begs the question to Microsoft – where is your similar service? After all, Microsoft offer the Windows Live search engine, and should be somewhat ashamed that Yahoo is setting the pace in the mobile search space. Still, Microsoft wouldn’t be where it is today without plenty of hardware and software partners, and with the whole ‘embrace and extend’ policy, we can be sure that a ‘Microsoft Mobile Search + More 1.0’ is on the way.

Yahoo! have also done a deal with major Taiwanese Windows Mobile device manufacturer HTC, who supply smartphones to major cell phone companies worldwide, and who also partly own the Dopod brand which sell HTC devices exclusively. HTC make millions of Windows Mobile devices and this will be very helpful to Yahoo! in getting their search software used by millions of people worldwide. HTC are also racing to be the first company to release a smartphone powered by Windows Mobile 6.0, as most devices are still loaded with the now-older Windows Mobile 5.0 OS.

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC said that “HTC is always seeking new ways to keep people connected to their community of friends and personalized content while mobile. With high resolution displays and breakthrough designs, HTC’s products are the ideal platform for Yahoo! Go 2.0. We are pleased to offer users the ultimate Yahoo! Go 2.0 experience on our innovative devices.”

So, what are the key features of Yahoo! Go 2.0 for Windows Mobile? Please read onto page 2 to find out!

– Search reinvented for mobile consumers — oneSearch(TM) is designed to recognize the intent of a search term and presents relevant content — not just a list of web links to PC sites — on the results page. Results are grouped by subject making it easy to read through and drill down to get more details.

– Be local, no matter where you are — The Local & Maps widget gives quick access to comprehensive local directory information for businesses across the US, enhanced with ratings and reviews from the millions-strong Yahoo! community. Interactive maps feature the ability to search directly for businesses, get driving directions and real time traffic updates.

– Rich, highly personalizable content from millions of sources — Current headlines and a breaking news ticker in the News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather and Finance widgets keep consumers connected to the information that matters to them. Consumers can customize to receive content from the millions of sources on the Web that publish in RSS.

– Photo sharing keeps consumers connected to their community — The Flickr(TM) widget integrates one of the Web’s most innovative and prolific photo-sharing communities, making it easy to upload(1) and manage images from their camera phone. Consumers can also easily share photos, view their friends’ pictures and browse or search the millions of images.

– Streamlined e-mail keeps consumers in sync — The E-mail widget allows consumers to quickly respond to, delete or compose new messages or view attachments with a single click — all automatically synchronized with their Yahoo! Mail account in real time.