Correct me if I’m wrong when I say putting Yahoo!-powered advertisements inside Adobe PDF files stinks a bit like the ad-ridden Opera browser. Except that since 2005, Opera has thrown out the pay-for-an-ad-free-version.
So is Adobe going backwards and doing what Opera has done ages ago? Not quite.
These pay-per-click ads will be contextual, like Google Adsense and Yahoo! Publisher Network. Publishers also stand a chance to earn from this, not just the advertisers and Yahoo! itself.
Since contextual ads are much more profitable from a certain viewpoint compared to the distracting banner ads once found inside Opera, this is supposedly better, right? I guess so, but why go backwards and put ads on software that was previously ad-free?
Because technically, you’re putting ads on the content of the PDF, not the software itself. Still, it reminds me of ad-infested programs—99% of which are spyware.