Yahoo and Google are making new moves to help small businesses better promote their wares -- in the process, aiming to make it more appealing to advertise on their sites.

Web pioneer Yahoo today introduced a new do-it-yourself display ad program for small businesses. Called My Display Ads, the program is a collaboration between Yahoo and AdReady, which is providing the ad templates and infrastructure support.

By using the Web-based, self-serve interface of My Display Ads, advertisers can create and customize campaigns using more than 800 templates, Yahoo said.

The templates can be sorted by best performing, with click-through rates shown, most used and newest. Advertisers can use their own ads as well. Ads can be targeted by geo-location, content category or Yahoo property. They show on the Yahoo network and third-party sites through the company's RightMedia ad network.

Additionally, advertisers can elect either pricing per impression or per click -- CPM (define) or CPC-based pricing (define) -- that enables Yahoo to cater to both branding and performance marketing goals. The new solution also helps advertisers track and manage campaign performance goals with daily reporting on key metrics.

"Yahoo My Display Ads allows small businesses to build on their search marketing with display campaigns that reach a targeted audience on some of the Internet's most popular Web sites," Joanne Bradford, Yahoo senior vice president market development, said in a statement. "This new solution provides an affordable and accessible option for businesses to run brand and performance campaigns that reach the local audiences that matter to them most."

Google and Facebook already offer similar self-serve advertising products, and AOL is developing one as well.

Google Base paid search ads

Yahoo isn't the only big search company making headlines with ad programs, however, as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is also testing out a new format for Google Base users.

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"At Google, we're constantly experimenting with new features, tools and visual representations to improve the user experience and usefulness of our ads," a Google spokesperson told InternetNews.com. "In accordance with that philosophy, we're planning a beta test to show richer product information in the ads for shopping-related queries. This test will only be visible to a small number of U.S. users."

The spokesperson declined to provide further details of the program.

However, an e-mail to advertisers posted on Google Blogoscope reveals further specifics. Under the new platform -- for now dubbed Google Affiliate Network Product Ads Beta Program -- merchants are charged only when someone buys a product from their site, as opposed to when someone clicks on an ad.

Merchants looking to participate can include their products in their Google Base feed, which is already indexed in Google Product Search results.

"Your product would appear as Sponsored Links on Google when users search for products that match the items in your feed," Google said in the e-mail.

It goes on to say that advertisers can see reports and manage their accounts through their Google Affiliate Network accounts, and that, "experiments will be limited to a small percentage of traffic until our full launch."

The efforts aim to capitalize on the continued growth in performance-based advertising, or those in which advertisers only pay for measurable results. That trend has kept paid search among the few strong areas in online ads, since it's purchased on a cost-per-click basis.