I’m not entirely sure this will be a resounding success for Google, but they’re now offering the ability to place ads in newspapers via their AdWords program.

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Yahoo just launched a new advertising tool called SmartAds. The tool takes personalization to a new level by allowing marketers to deliver ads that are more relevant to the viewer.

An example from the CNET article helps illustrate:

For instance, instead of just seeing a generic ad for a Toyota Prius, a woman in San Francisco who conducts research on hybrid cars on Yahoo Autos could be served an ad for a local San Francisco dealer, along with information on the types of Priuses in stock and their purchase price. The ad, which is configured on the fly, could also feature a background color targeted for women in her age range, as well as a Golden Gate Bridge logo.

Initially the ads will appear on Yahoo’s publisher network but will eventually show on partner sites like Comcast and eBay.

For more information check out the full article.

Read/WriteWeb has an interesting article up about Next Generation Advertising. The article draws primarily from a presentation made by Google’s VP of Sales and Operations, Sheryl Sandberg.

Sheryl identifies 3 things about the future of online advertising:

1. Advertisers need to get better at creating a 1:1 experience for their users. As an example, she cited the work that Cadillac did with their MyCadillac campaign.
2. Advertisements need to continue increasing personalization. This was surprising to me, given that I don’t believe Google has publicly announced any plans to incorporate behavioral targeting into their ad delivery system.
3. Users are demanding the delivery of information to be an experience and advertising must respond to it, just like content needs to.

Read the full article.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is reporting that the rumored Google/FeedBurner deal is now confirmed.

FeedBurner is immensely popular among bloggers and Google is wise to add this great service to its portfolio of products. With FeedBurner in the bag, Google now has an instant outlet for advertising in RSS feeds.

It’s only a rumor at this point but it’s being reported that Google is buying FeedBurner.

FeedBurner is a great service for bloggers and others who create content they want delivered via RSS feeds. FeedBurner manages the subscriptions for the RSS feed and provides a lot of valuable statistics about feed readership, etc.

FeedBurner also allows advertisers to insert ads into RSS feeds, which explains Google’s alleged intent to acquire them. Getting ads into feeds is critical because many subscribers to a feed may not actually visit the website but read the articles via a feed reader like Google Reader instead.

It is, at this point, just a rumor however. We’ll see if it plays out.