Source: washingtonpost.com

Yahoo Inc. is expanding a test of its mobile telephone advertising network to include more visually appealing messages.Yahoo Inc. this week will start testing graphical ads on mobile phones in the United States.

Consumers can click on ads to learn more details about an advertiser’s offer or to call the advertiser.

Yahoo’s Mobile Web service is available on most phones offered by major wireless operators in the United States. It gives consumers access to a basic Yahoo services, including search, e-mail, news, stock quotes and sports.

JupiterResearch estimates that 10 percent of U.S. mobile users browse the Internet on their phones. But only 2-3 percent check the Web on their phones at least five times a week.

Yahoo is growing its mobile advertising base by beginning to deliver graphical ads to wireless users who view Yahoo properties via mobile phones.

Yahoo will be testing ’slimmed-down’ banner ads and other display ads on Yahoo Mobile Web, where it has also tested Yahoo Search Marketing ads.

The addition of graphical ads,  comes a month after Yahoo began delivering short, written messages to mobile phones, relying on some of the same algorithms used by its Internet search engine. That, too, is being done on an experimental basis for now. The first graphical ads are set to go live later this week.

The Sunnyvale-based company is betting more advertisers will be trying to reach the mobile phone market as more people rely on increasingly sophisticated handsets to surf the Web, check their e-mail and download media content.

Internet search leader Google Inc., which runs the Web’s largest ad network, also is gearing up for an aggressive push into the mobile phone market.

While Yahoo has gotten a head start in the mobile advertising market, investors have been more disappointed with the company’s inability to keep pace with Google on the Internet.

Through the first nine months of this year, Google had reeled in a profit of $2.05 billion _ well ahead of Yahoo’s net income of $1.21 billion during the same period. The disparity has contributed to a more than 30 percent decline in Yahoo’s stock price so far this year while Google’s market value has climbed by about 15 percent.

Spread the word:bookmark it/ readit