Adobe and Yahoo! are testing a new program that lets publishers place advertisements in PDF documents, reports Reuters. “The Adobe service allows publishers to generate revenue by including text-based ads linked to the content of an Adobe PDF (portable document format) page in a separate side panel.”

We’re curious how this actually works, since Adobe and Yahoo! say that no special software is needed.

The text-based ads are displayed in a panel adjacent to the content with no moving or flashing elements. Each time the PDF is viewed, ads are matched by Yahoo to the content.

It sounds like the ads are dynamic, not static, so we suspect they won’t show up in third-party PDF viewers such OS X’s built-in Preview app.

“Adobe and Yahoo test running ads inside PDF documents” [Reuters]
(Image: Gutenberg Project)