Yahoo recently announced the launch of its new online advertising service, My Display Ads. The service appears to be ideal for those smaller online businesses that want to take their bland, text-based ads to the next level. However, the service has already been proclaimed by the blogosphere to be far from perfect.

Here we'll take a look at the pros and cons of Yahoo's new ad service.

Pros:

Elevate your online appeal with eye-catching ads

Yahoo teamed up with Seattle-based ad design company AdReady for the project, which has resulted in 800 templates from which budding advertisers can choose. This means that even the creatively-challenged can put together a very nice-looking display ad.

Customize your ads

Onto these ads, users can upload their own logos and images, as well as, of course, composing their own text.

Target your ads

Yahoo's new service also allows users to choose the demographic, location, and even times of day their ads will appear.

Doesn't drain your budget

Since it is targeting small- to medium-sized businesses, Yahoo's minimum budget for its display ads is lower than traditional display advertising, starting at $30 per day.

Choose your pricing model

The new service also lets users choose between CPM (cost per impression R

11; the more traditional model) and CPC (cost per click – the more modern search marketing model).

Cons:

Geographically limited

Unlike Google's Adsense, which began running self-service display ads last October, Yahoo's My Display Ads are only deployable within the US. Google announced just last month that its ad builder would be available in 100 countries and in 40 languages.

Template design

Some bloggers and commenters have already expressed their distaste for Yahoo's new services' template designs, with some calling them 'ugly'.

Yahoo late in the game

Yahoo is certainly not the first to venture into the self-service ad industry – with major players like Google, Facebook, and MySpace already having one foot in the door.

Costs may yet be too high for some

Let's face it, many small businesses will not be able to cough up the minimum $30 a day ad budget that Yahoo requires, which ads up to $900 a month, or nearly $11,000 a year.

Conclusions:

It's still far too early to draw large conclusions about Yahoo's new ad service. We'll have to see how it goes. But few people will be complaining about the online display ad service industry becoming more competitive, as Yahoo's move into this sector demonstrates. It will likely serve to drive down costs and improve the ad service, as the major players compete for their clients' advertising dollars.