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.

Comments

Sheesh

[tritonman]

So if PDF is supposed to be a publishing format, how can the view on the computer be different than the printed view? Why don't they just skip all this craziness and just ad-enable monitors.

Re:Sheesh

[secPM_MS]

PDF is now a programmable display platform, not a publishing format. Its programmability is significant enough that it is a potential security threat to users, who view it as data, not as a potential executable. The extension to advertising is obvious. How else will this functionality be used?

This problem is no unique to pdf. The community swallowed the feature richness line and chose to ignore the old dictum, keep your data and your executables separate.

How would you like your XML? Would you like javascript as well? How about AJAX?

Re:How Long?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

--Samuel Johnston

Re:Just what I need...

[gilesjuk]

Yahoo are great at this sort of thing, annoying the hell out of net users. It's why I stopped using their services.

Adverts sure don't work for me. If there's something I want I will check for reviews and opinion, a brand and flashy adverts don't persuade me to part with my cash.

Re:Because the consumer asked for it.

[Abreu]

Well, it depends on who do you consider their customers are... I think that Yahoo and Google provide a service to the public, but their true customers (the ones paying for the services) are the advertisers...

So yeah, their customers clamored for more ads.

Charming

[overshoot]

... one more rule for the firewall, anyone?

now with more annoyance

[wizardforce]

dynamic ads require a source of data to work and that means they can probably be disabled by blacklisting the source servers, either that or they will actually start embedding ads into the PDFs themselves as "static content" that nothing short of aditing the PDF manually will solve.

Re:Because the consumer asked for it.

[Orange Crush]

Adobe gives Acrobat reader away for free. It charges money for its fancy publishing tools. So many of their paying customers are content creators that like getting paid . . . so yeah . . . I'll bet some of them actually asked for ads.

Yahoo vs Google

[jhfry]

Google realizes that it cannot make money through advertising indefinately... so what does it do, it researches new ides to an extreme previously unheard of. Their ads are lightwight and unobtrusive. Essentially they are ad funded, but overall they are good to their users/customers.

Yahoo, who doesn't seem to get it, simply finds ways to put ads where they haven't been before. Great for the ad revenue, bad for their users.

Is there really anyone who hasn't figured out why Google is such a majority favorite? If not for google, I suspect that flash based ads would still be the standard, and everyone would be experiementing with streaming video ads or some crap like that. Thank god google came along and showed their competition that the business model doesn't require large, annoying ads, but instead a huge volume of well placed ads that appeal instead of repel the user!

If yahoo wan't ad's in PDF's, so be it... all the more reason for me to stick with google.

acroread gives the hint (javascript)

[TheGratefulNet]

first time I saw jscript in acroread, I barfed.

it was also the last time I ran and installed acroread, too.

you listening adobe?

xpdf does the job just fine for me, now. are you happy, adobe? (I am!)

what is this going to do to corp america that often does NOT want anyone outside the company knowing that person A opened doc B? much less having outbound and inbound packets eat up your corp network b/w.

bright idea (not!).

then again, people DO seem to be running acroread (win or other version) and so maybe they just don't CARE that scripting and 'active things' happen just because they opened a doc.

Or how bout this?

[Cathoderoytube]

Or better yet, how bout I use Open Office and get ad-free documents?
Somehow I don't see a professional document being very professional if adverts are included.

'So you see the fiscal outlook for this quarter were much larger than previous quarters this can be -what the?! Oh uhh, sorry folks, you'll have to bear with me. I clicked 'larger' and I'm being re-directed to a penis enlargement website. If everybody would please avert their eyes from the screen and maybe look at the non ad-laced budget forecast printout provided while I try to close these pop ups'

Great. Now PDFs will be even slower and crappier

[GnarlyDoug]

I hate PDFs. Every time I wind up having to open one of these things in a browser it just sucks. They load up slow. If they're large then I often times cannot even page forward. They're very laggy, and sometimes just plain lock up. The frustration with trying to read a PDF is already huge for me. I see this behavior on Windows and Mac boxes, and with various browsers as well, and it's not like I'm using ancient machines. Maybe other people have had different experiences? What am I missing here? PDF just seems broken to me already.

Anyway, now they want to add ads to these things? I really don't know what to say. I already consider PDFs to be on the verge of being totally unusable. This should push them right over the edge.

Re:Great. Now PDFs will be even slower and crappie

[hobo sapiens]

I used to feel that way. Then I started using Foxit PDF reader.

The problem isn't with PDF in itself. PDF is perceived as a problem for two reasons:

1) Adobe Acrobat. Get rid of it, for goodness sake. Use something else. PDF isn't slow, Adobe's crappy reader is slow.
2) Web developers cannot resist putting TPPs on websites. What's a TPP, you ask? A Totally Pointless PDF. People: if you have a website, there's one way to get me to NEVER read your content. How? By putting it in PDF. The ONE exception is this: if you have a book or reference manual, then that is an appropriate use of PDF. But tell me that I am downloading a PDF. Don't disguise your PDF as another web page by just putting it behind a normal link. When I click a link, unless I am warned that it's a PDF, I expect an HTML page. PDF just interrupts the flow of the web. Don't believe me? The just google usability and PDF. You'll get lots of stuff like this: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html.

PDF is like other overused "web" technologies like flash: useful when used properly, and annoying as hell when overused.

That doesn't apply to Adobe

[KWTm]

Your comment is insightful, but doesn't apply to Adobe's current situation.

Yahoo and Google provide a service to the public, but their true customers (the ones paying for the services) are the advertisers...

Indeed, many people fail to realize that, when it comes to services supported by advertising, the public is the product, not the customer. This explains why companies may sometimes piss off the public despite the adage that "the customer is king."

However, Adobe has not been supported by ad revenue, at least not in a major way. They are now breaking into a new business model where they do have ad revenue, but that doesn't necessarily excuse any antagonization of the public just because "hey, now the public is the product, not the customer."

Good Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is a pretty decent idea. From the context it is talking about only PDFs created with a certain version of the software rather than regular adobe pro, which means you wouldn't use it for creating professional office documents, but distributable publications. It also makes some mention of the publisher being able to profit from it, this would be a cool way for someone to make a career of writing and distributing content without charging for it or hosting it on a server. They just wrap the content up as PDF with the ads and then it can travel through email or be posted anywhere and can be profitable through the proliferation of its usage.

With the rising cost of published books and the diminishment of the publishing industry due to internet usage, this may be a new way to profit from writing without having to make people pay for it.

Now rip me a new one for being a corporate shrew.

Re:Because the consumer asked for it.

[vic-traill]

"God is dead" - Nietzsche, 1882

"Nietzsche is dead" - God, 1900

"He's dead, Jim" - Dr. McCoy

Re:How Long?

[jacquesm]

The Future Of Advertising

While walking down the street 'security' cameras will perform face recognition on everybody walking by. The 'search space' problem will be solved by tracking you all day long, so it is a relatively small problem compared to recognizing a random face. Installed during the terrorism craze in the beginning of the century they now serve a different master. Once tracked you stay tracked. Then the advertising kicks in, small, weak laser based units will beam targeted advertising straight onto your retina while you're walking by. On your way to the mall to buy a pair of jeans ? Maybe in the need of a new vehicle (after all, you're walking). Targeted ads never were named more aptly, and you're being sold to the highest bidder, one of the stores that you are going to pass anyway will surely hit you, another 'kill' for the admasters.

PDF's had a pretty good automatic 'informative' rating in my book to this date, I'll have to review that and degrade it. IMNSHO this is the most stupid thing adobe could have done. I'm sure they'll make some $ on the decision but it sure seems like a short sighted move to me.