Yahoo! announced on their Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog that they are hosting a free one hour webinar that will demonstrate why using adding Yahoo! My Display Ads into your marketing mix can energize your search campaigns. The webinar will be held this coming Thursday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. You can register for the webinar here.

Yahoo! My Display Ads is an innovative display advertising solution that allows you to easily create your own banner ads and run them across the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! claims that their service isn’t just for big companies. Today, they have opened their doors to smaller businesses and individuals. They offer an easy and affordable way for you to create banner ads and run them across their entire Yahoo! network.

Creating ads is simple. Yahoo! insists that designers are not needed and that there are no development costs involved. Yahoo! My Display Ads comes with design tools that will help you create and customize your own banners. The ad system also offers campaign targeting. You can specify the geographic locations, site-content categories, and demographics you want. Additionally, you have the option to set a daily budget, and control the pay per click and cost per impression rates. Lastly, Yahoo! My Display Ads offer performance tracking. You can get daily reports on clicks, impressions, and conversions. There’s also tools that allow you to maximize your ad performance.

By attending this free webinar, you will You will learn: The benefits of combining search and display advertising, more about Yahoo!’s innovative display advertising and targeting solutions, display advertising best practices, and how other business owners are succeeding with display advertising. I recommend tuning in. It’s free and the webinar will begin during the afternoon, so you can kick back and listen in while you have lunch.

Last month, Yahoo! unveiled the new and improved Yahoo! Search. One of the key elements of their new and enhanced version of search claims to give users more control over the results they see by allowing users to filter results by website. Consequently, offering control to advertisers is something Yahoo! wants to deliver as well. They are doing so by including sponsored ads in the filtered search results.

With Yahoo!’s new search page, users can search for various keywords and phrases, and then refine the search results by clicking on the names of sites that appear on the left side. These sites appear based on what other people have found useful in the past. When users click on these featured sites, the results are then filtered to display results only from that particular domain.

How that works with advertisers is when a user selects a site that is also a sponsored search advertisers, that advertisers’ advertisement will be displayed again in the new set of results. The advertisers will only pay if the user clicks on the ad. All in all, the advertisers still receive the same opportunity to receive clicks prior to any filtering. However, advertisers whose sites show up on the left side as a filtering site option will receive futher opportunities to receive clicks.

I like the idea of Yahoo! displaying sponsored ads in filtered results. Doing so creates a very strong opportunity for advertisers to experience an increase in CTR simply because once a users has applied the site filter, ads are going to be displayed to more relevant traffic, and existing there is far less sponsored ad competition.

Some people might question the amount of exposure the filtered ads will receive. I have to say that I think having the navigation options on the left really increase the awareness of the features being available. I think advertisers might find that they’re getting pretty good exposure, clicks, and qualified leads for the money invested. If you’re interested in advertising online, advertising on Yahoo! is something I would consider looking into.

Today Yahoo! launched their all new Yahoo! Search, claiming to make results more presonally relevant. According to Yahoo!, they have been soft testing their new engine with a percentage of users. Yahoo! claims that their new search is designed to help users find and explore their interests better by enhancing user experiences.

In addition to the newly launched Yahoo! search, there have been quite a few surprises occurring with Yahoo! over the last few months. The first big was their newly launched Yahoo! homepage. If it’s been awhile since you’ve been to Yahoo!, you might want to check it out. You can now use apps to view your favorite sites from the comfort of the Yahoo! homepage.

Other recent improvements include a new and enhanced version of their Yahoo! Mail, as well as higher quality video calling features in Yahoo! Messenger. Lastly, Yahoo! has a new suite of mobile features worth checking out as well. All in all, things are looking pretty good for Yahoo! At least I can say that they’re actively trying. And you know what, I think they are doing quite well. I actually enjoy visiting Yahoo! again. That’s something I couldn’t say just a year ago. Much has changed, and I hope they continue moving in a forward direction.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Yahoo! will succeed in the long term, or will they eventually become a dot Com failure? I’d really hate to see Yahoo! go, would it matter to you though? Share your thoughts below.