Being Google’s competitor has never been easy for Yahoo, but here’s something that might spice things up a little bit and give Yahoo a needed boost. In a recent blog post, Yahoo revealed its new Rich Ads in Search service, which allows advertisers to add video, images, and custom search boxes to their ads.

 

As we all know it, online advertising draws significant incentive from users to click and check out the various offers, but they’ve become so plain that Yahoo felt they needed a change. A test which took place in the fourth quarter of 2008 indicated that click-through rates went up 25 percent thanks to rich ads.

 

The service is still being tested and is invitation only for advertisers, however, Yahoo revealed the names of several brand advertisers that have been included in the program, namely Pedigree, Esurance and Razorfish.

 

Through this new service, advertisers can add images and videos to their ads, increasing the impact these may have on consumers; they can create deep links to relevant pages; include boxes within the listing, allowing users to directly search for a specific product or a store location; and show their logo.

 

Yahoo revealed that the rich ads not only increased the click-through rates significantly, but they have also improved brand exposure and conversion rates.

 

Yahoo hopes that through this initiative, it will manage to catch up a bit with major competitors. Everyone else hopes to see it rise back to expectations, after an unfortunate recent period in terms of business and management.