I was reading an interesting article recently in regards to a move by eBay to introduce an advertising system not to dissimilar to Google and Yahoo.

Online marketplace eBay Inc. is set to unveil a keyword advertising system for eBay sellers to promote auctions on other Web sites, borrowing from the strategies of Google and Yahoo.

Michael van Swaaij, eBay (Research)’s chief strategy officer, told a conference of software developers here Saturday of plans to allow eBay’s army of auctioneers to run contextual ads on other Web sites in exchange for a cut of the resulting eBay sales.

eBay’s system differs from existing pay-per-click advertising systems offered by Google and rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. by linking only to eBay auctions rather than serving as a generic advertising network.

The world’s largest e-commerce site said it plans to provide hundreds of thousands of eBay auctioneers with simple snippets of code they can embed on other Web sites that showcase items that are for sale on eBay’s site.

A test of the program, dubbed eBay AdContext, is set to be introduced early next week, Swaaij said. What goods appear in any particular advertisement will be determined by the keywords on that Web page, a technique known as contextual advertising.

Read more…cnn.com

As I pondered the possibilities of this new system I came across a post on Lynn Terry’s blog that addressed the situation very well.