Deal Book is reporting that Yahoo will run a trial of Google Adsense for Search on a small percentage of its search results. The move is reported to be an attempt at raising shareholder value and to allow Yahoo to demand more money from Microsoft with its bid for Yahoo.

Am I the only one who finds this weird? Yahoo has its one search platform and while it has not caught on in the industry like Google Adwords has it is a competitor to Adwords. I will admit that I don’t have a lot of experience with Yahoo Ads. I was accepted into the program early on and I ran it a little on a couple of sites, but the ads where not really relevant to the content on those sites so I removed it and put Adsense back on those sites. It appears really the main people this program has been able to attract and keep are those who have been removed from the Adsense program for what ever reason. Regardless of my lack of experience with Yahoo, this just seems like bad business. Why would they pump up revenue for a competitor. Perhaps decisions such as this are why they have put themselves in the position to be acquired in the first place. Maybe Yahoo should take Microsoft’s offer since it seems they don’t have the talent needed to run their own business.

I personally think this acquisition will help the marketers on the net, especially those of us who derive revenue from contextual based ads. Right now Google is the leader in this area and as a result are able to set the tone for the market. More competition in this area will possibly mean a higher cut of advertising revenue for the people who actually generate the revenue. Microsoft has not made a lot of progress with its ads program, but combining both what MS has and what little progress Yahoo has made, should require Google to offer more incentive to prevent publishers from jumping ship.

Of course there is also the chance the merger will allow Microsoft to regain some ground in this area. Microsoft has a habit of being late to the game with these types of items and then pulling out ahead and crushing the competition. With the additional eyeballs the Yahoo properties will give MS, they may be able to start their road to dominance on the net. Guess we’ll just need to wait and see what happens.