As part of its effort to make its core revenue engine more powerful, Yahoo introduced new ad targeting features Tuesday, including the ability to select advertisements based on what a person has searched for.
The technology, called search retargeting, is one of three new features designed to tailor ads based on user behavior. The other two are enhanced retargeting, which lets advertisers tune ads according to what users have done on the advertisers' Web sites, and enhanced targeting for search, which lets advertisers adjust ads shown next to search results according to user age and other factors.
Yahoo has argued that it's a stronger company when able to serve both online ad formats, the search ads next to search results and the "display" ads such as graphics and videos. Indeed, as evidence of its hybrid philosophy, it's begun testing display ads next to search results, something rival Google doesn't do.