Yahoo! goes after Google’s Adsense program

Yahoo! is trying hard to catch-up with the Google search engine with their acquisitions of Overture and AllTheWeb technologies. While, it keeps on working on improving its search engine… the company is now aiming to get back at the hugely popular Google Adsense program. They want to expand their advertising network and have now decided to open up a beta program to test their technologies through small and medium sized web publishers.

The company has until now targeted big networks of websites like CNN and ESPN and knows that to get the numbers they have to go large scale and get the masses to use their advertising network. Google’s Adsense is open to anyone with a website, which follows certain guidelines. Anyone with a 10-page website can get access to Google Adsense program, run ads powered by Google, and earn money.

Yahoo! would like to do the same and is starting slow. The online advertising market is huge and the analysts believe that it will continue to grow rapidly. It is going to be worth around $8 billion to $10 billion this year alone. For a start, Yahoo! is starting a self-service Web site where online publishers can sign up for Yahoo’s Content Match products which serves content relevant ads.

Like Google, they would be offering the publishers a share of the revenues generated by these advertisements and try to lure away these users from Google’s program. Publishers are hoping to get a bulk of the share from advertising from Yahoo! considering Google dominates the market in a big way. It would be interesting to see if Yahoo! can generate as much excitement as Google did with their program and at least match the capabilities of Google.