Yahoo shows ads in IM chat windows

Yahoo has begun showing advertisements within instant messenger chat windows.

(Credit: CNET News)

Updated 4 p.m. PST with further Yahoo comment.

Yahoo Messenger (Windows | Mac) long has shown ads on its buddy list window, but the Internet pioneer is testing them in the instant-messaging chat windows as well.

The ads are part of a test that began in August and ends in December, Yahoo said in a statement. One example we saw here at CNET shows an ad for MasterCard.

"Ads in Yahoo Messenger will allow us to put even more resources behind developing and delivering valuable free features and services," Yahoo said. "Yahoo Messenger is a free service to our users, and our goal is to provide a useful and relevant experience while ensuring this is a profitable business for Yahoo. Yahoo is inherently an advertising-driven business."

The company wouldn't comment yet on what happens after the test is finished. "Plans will be made when the testing is concluded," the company said.

Yahoo laid off 1,520 employees last week and is in the midst of a review of all its business units to see which should be preserved. The company is under fierce financial pressure that only got worse with the recession and increasingly gloomy forecasts for online advertising.

Google shows ads in Gmail that are selected on the basis of e-mail content, but the Yahoo IM ads aren't selected on the basis of context, Yahoo said.

"The ad shows at most once per day per user and scrolls away" as an IM conversation continues, Yahoo said. "Right now the ads are being tested in versions of Yahoo Messenger 7.0 and above."

[TeMerc]

Guess who stops using YIM? Didn't use it much anyhows.

Anyone know of any apps that disable that sort of junk? There's one for WLM and AIM(I think)

[another_cissp]

It?s nice to know they haven?t learned from their mistakes. That is what cost them the search engine wars back in 1999, they started popping up really annoying popup advertising that sent many people to other search engines (including myself). There is nothing wrong with advertising, it just need to be done right and in good taste.

[Michichael]

Yet another reason not to use one of the worst clients in the world. So many spam messages... oi vey. I use trillian when I do use YIM.

[jumpjetta]

Yeah, YIM = trash. Already get lots of porn/spam on YIM... now sanctioned spam? Bye-bye.

[AndrewRich]

I use iChat (Mac) and connect to Yahoo through Jabber. Here's how: http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/52054-howto-use-msn-yahoo-icq-ichat-tiger-only.html

[sanenazok]

Wow nice iWorkAround...what about macs being perfect and all...

[Dalkorian]

Mac's are far from perfect Sanenazok - just not nearly as far as winblows is. Now that you understand that, maybe you can prevent yourself from looking like a mindless shill.

[random truth]

I use Audium, it handles pretty much any IM service

[AndrewRich]

random_truth: As I recall, while Adium does handle multiple protocols including Yahoo, it doesn't support any audio or video chat. Is that still the case? I also like how iChat integrates with the OS X Address Book and Mail.

[jimskimik]

Just use Pidgin. No adds and all your chat clients in one. Works great.

[kucingliar]

Been spotted sometime, so prefer 3rd party IM

[hmdz105]

That is mistake, a big one. They are putting ads where no one can stand it, right in the middle of your conversation. Seems like Yahoo doesn't learn from its past mistakes. Instead of that ad feature, they'd better work on a way to stop fake & hoax users from sending porn to other real members of their IM.

[Sausagebiscuit]

Miranda IM. Super light-weight IM client, free open source. No spam, tiny resources, big package. miranda-im.org IMHO even better than pidgin which has become rather hungry as of late. Miranda is a no-frills client with plugin support. If you want to just chat without 1000s of 'features' then check it out. 1.5MB download package. Yep. Not 12.5MB like pidgin.

[jtaylorhoopla]

I use Trillian Astra. I've been in the beta for about a year now. Loving it more than ever. Try Giving Me Ads In my Im Windows Yahoo!!! HAHA.

[naterandrews]

I don't see why people are complaining. This is a free service provided by a company- not some nonprofit. They provide a service millions like to use while making a little money on the side, it's a good trade-off. I've seen some of the ads while chatting myself, and so far they are non-intrusive.

Instead of complaining about a SINGLE AD that shows up about once a day on average, you can downgrade Y!M versions lower than 7 or scroll away past the ad. (BTW, this is no different than Microsoft taking sponsorships and placements in their own Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger bloated family of products)

[sanenazok]

I agree, either pay for the service or put up with an ad or two. Instead everyone goes "oh my gosh" I have to look at an ad and it makes me want to cry!

[Dalkorian]

I think the reason for that reaction Sanenazok is because we have advertisements shoved in our faces everywhere we look. Try to go a day without seeing an ad. The only way I can think of doing that now is to either wake up in the forest a few hundred miles away from civilization or to stay in bed all day with your covers pulled over your face.
.
Commercials on TV, radio, movies and the internet at large (websites, mail, now IM too). Billboards on the freeway, busses and subways. After a while people just get sick of it all. I've got to the point where I only watch TV off the Tivo, where I can fast forward past all the commercials and watch what I want.

[Robert G K]

Plus the ad is so small, its not like a huge banner ad. I can ignore it no problem. :) I ignore the ad on the YIM buddy list window, I hardly notice it. Some people just like to complain.

[Rolv]

How about ads for your own company in the employee emails?

Companies seem to ignore the single largest online branding/advertising venue available: their own regular external emails. Why not use these emails to market the senders company?

You have a website.
You send emails.

Why not multiply your sales-staff by ?wrapping? the regular email in an interactive letterhead?

No other marketing or advertising medium is as targeted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.

[sanenazok]

Awful idea...I loathe to open attachments already, now inline images too. Thanks.

[Dalkorian]

I'm with Sanenazok on this one, a worse idea I haven't heard. Besides, many free email services like Yahoo already advertise their services as "signatures" added to the end of the message. Maybe Rolv hasn't noticed them, but I have. Don't misunderstand me, those "signature" ads don't bother me much (price for "free"), but expanding that to allow (insert favorite over advertised company here) to wrap my messages in a commercial is enough to make me puke.

[mikepalomino]

I have to grudgingly agree that this is a bad move on Yahoo's part. However, I'm willing to put up with this inconvenience, as I am a fan of Yahoo's Instant Messenger. Even with this new "feature" - it's not as obnoxious as AOL Instant Messenger, and I find its various features (including their aesthetically pleasing emoticons) better than plain-vanilla clients like Pidgin (which, I use to replace MSN/AIM).

That said, Yahoo needs someone to reign in their strategy of trying to be everything to everyone. They start up new services only to shut them down shortly afterwords. It has been this strategy that I believe has run them into the dirt, not their over-reliance on advertising revenue.

In the end when it comes to these "free" services - I'm willing to put up with a few ads.

[Freikapp]

I still prefer Skype by far. I prefer plain-vanilla tools over a solution that pumps your screen full of news and ads I really don't want to read. I have also chosen a solution on my mobile phone that is super clean yet effective.
It is called http://www.blitzplanet.com and was developed a year ago by an English company, it has the added advantage of offering international SMS texting at just 10 pence, which is pretty low in any currency these days (boohoo but that's another matter). They charge 1pound per month for using the IM service, or free if you purchase their SMS solution at 5 pounds. Oh yes and on some phones you can take pictures and send these over IP directly from the phone.

[joeadops]

I was part of the team that was testing these new ads in messenger. I built the Mastercard ad in the screen shot. It's really too bad Yahoo let me go. If anyone is looking for ad operations sales engineers or technical operations specialists, please email joeadops at yahoo dot com.

[jblogg]

You can only commercialize so much! My company stopped using Yahoo IM because of all the ads. Some of them were not work friendly. We switched over to an enterprise IM client through www.Brosix.com because we needed control over both security and what our employees were being exposed to. Those ads cost Yahoo hundreds of customers...