Much of the reason for this decision could lie in the fact that Yahoo! is about to merge completely with Microsoft’s Bing, a move that will shuffle around responsibilities between the two companies. As it stands, Yahoo! is set to take on the advertising needs of bigger companies, with Bing taking on the smaller ones. Thus, there’s less of a need for Yahoo! to maintain a network that was largely designed for smaller companies to profit.

Read the letter send out to publishers below, and check out Chitika if you’re looking to continue with running pay per click ads through Yahoo!.

Dear Publisher,

Yahoo! continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services, in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences. After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.

Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.

For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform. Click here for more information.

We thank you for your participation in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please contact our Support Team at (866) 785-2636, Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT.
Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

Reviews, Show Times, Basic Info - What More Could You Want?

The main premise of the project operates behind one major motto: “Death to the 10 Blue Links.” That now standard search engine page listing of 10 hyperlinks Yahoo is declaring taboo, and they’re set to do something about it.

A video interview with Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo’s Labs and Search Strategy Director, didn’t yield the most fluid explanation of what exactly we’re going to see when the new WOO goes live, but it should cater to your needs quite well.

Check out this quotable from Raghavan:

“The real world we live and work in is full of objects – politicians, professors, monuments, restaurants, neighborhoods. Each has certain attributes, like what kind of food [the restaurant] serves or where it is located.”

Thus, a search for Star Trek, as Raghavan points out on Kara Swisher’s video blog, would yield showtimes, cast listings, critical reviews and other pertinent, official information about the film, rather than the film’s official website and a series of Trekkie forums. Raghavan elaborates:

“We’re building a view of the world. Say you come with a query; the first thing we do is figure out what this person is intending to do. Then, instead of giving you ten blue links, we give you the object satisfying your intent.”

So if you type in a street address, the first thing you’ll likely see is an option to get directions to that particular address– a great improvement over the real estate listings that currently show up on Yahoo’s first page.

Obviously this is something that will take a few rounds of tweaking to get right. Yahoo plans to use a little bit of common sense (someone searching Syracuse restaurant at 6pm Eastern Time will get Syracuse, New York listings instead of those for the Syracuse in Sicily) and some serious research (Yahoo’s SeachMonkey project will seriously aid the cause), but the whole operation could be a little touch-and-go in its early stages.

Yahoo’s going to test the market a little bit with some smaller sample studies. If everything goes well we should expect to see this WOO rolled out in the next two or three months.

Buckle up.