With the Google acquisition of DoubleClick a few months back, it’s clear that Yahoo has to make significant moves to sure up its lead in the display advertising realm.  Otherwise, Yahoo will fall behind Google as they have done in search.  Falling behind Google is tantamount to a final defeat because in this market it doesn’t seem as if there are any aids to climb back up the muddy hill that seems to separate Google from its competition.

So, this is an interesting (and needed) development…

Yahoo SmartAds combines Yahoo’s demographic, geographic and behavioral-targeting capabilities with a new patent-pending creative ad assembly platform that allows the company’s ad system to create customized ads in real time. Yahoo will get different backgrounds, logos and other features from the creative agencies that can be reconfigured with ad copy based on who is seeing the ad and what they are interested in.

Yahoo SmartAds sound very “widgety” to me. In fact, I think that’s what will make them a strong competitor in the display ad race… the ability to have the ads monitor and adjust automatically on the fly eliminates a good deal of the mysticism and art that once kept display advertising success behind the temple shroud.  For that reason, I think smaller web publishers will laud and applaud SmartAds while larger publishers will snub their noses.

Can’t wait to see them in the wild…

Yahoo launches customizable ad tool | CNET News.com