Yahoo, Adobe To Serve Ads In PDFs

Placid writes to alert us to a new channel opening up between advertisers and our eyeballs: PDFs with context-sensitive text ads. The service is called "Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo" and it goes into public beta today. The "ad-enabled" PDFs are served off of Adobe's servers. The article mentions viewing them in Acrobat or Reader but doesn't mention what happens when a non-Adobe PDF reader is used. The ads don't appear if the PDF is printed.

Ad "Enabled"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Funny use of the word "enabled".

Yeah. Soon to be "Ad Disabled" once my proxy is updated.

urgent need

[FranTaylor]

Why do I suddenly feel an urgent need to rush to the store to buy some Lightspeed Briefs?

Because the consumer asked for it.

[TheGeneration]

Obviously Yahoo and Adobe are doing this because the constumer asked to have ads served to them. Clearly they had customers calling them daily "Where are my ads? I want ADS!!!"

I wish some of these tech companies would take a hint from craigslist. You can make money and have happy customers.

Re:Because the consumer asked for it.

[mackermacker]

Are you saying tech companies should offer casual encounters with college girls and lonely housewives? Sounds like a plan to me, they win my vote!

Re:urgent need

[saboola]

Before you know it they are going to b ... Lightspeed briefs, style and comfort for the discriminating crotch. e interrupting my comment writing with ads.

Shooting the Moon!

[eli pabst]

Awesome! I was wondering how Adobe was going to make Acrobat Reader even more of a bloated monstrosity than it already is. What a better way to expand its memory footprint than to integrate some kind of ad management function. I hope they use Flash ads for this. I can smell the sweet aroma of burning RAM already!

Re:Because the consumer asked for it.

[Carnildo]

"God is dead" - Nietzsche, 1882

"Nietzsche is dead" - God, 1900

"Nietzsche is God" - The dead, 1918