Raising the colors on Yahoo! Publisher Network

“Color” is a word with considerable value. It’s shaded with meaning. Expressions like “the color of money,” “color me old-fashioned,” “colorful language,” “local color,” “technicolor yawn” and “colorful character” rarely raise a hue or cry because of their cultural saturation, but they are still useful in letting others know the tone of your feelings and how your worldview is tinted—they let you reveal your true colors.

Each color has its connotations: Gray is associated with elegance; blue with peace, as well as technology; red with anger, protest and revolution—stand up for color and make a change!—green with fertility; yellow with joy; purple with sensuality and pink with gratitude.

Do you come from a red state or a blue one? Are you a full-fledged red or are you just a pink? Maybe you’re a patriot called to the colors? Are you red with rage? Green with envy? Does your cloud have a silver lining? Ever tied a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree? Did you know that people who have the colorful condition known as synesthesia can hear, taste, smell and even feel color.

At Yahoo! Publisher Network we like colors. Lots of them. That’s why we built a palate of 216 websafe colors and hues into our ad serving platform. That’s more colors than you’ll find a box of crayons. Don’t believe me? Just Yahoo! “crayons” and see for yourself. Your typical box of crayons has just 64.

In addition, you can upload any color of your choice, as long as you know the code for it. The possibilities are hexadecimal. In theory at least, there should be 16⁸, or 4,294,967,296, possible color combinations to use at your whim. Of course, not every single HTML color string will translate into a distinct color. But still, there are a lot of colors to choose from; maybe not a tretrigintillion or even a duotrigintillion, but more than enough to start your own color guard.

You’re free to dabble in our hues, and experiment with all the colors of our rainbow. You may not verge on a Van Gogh, and maybe your aesthetics don’t match Mondrian’s. Maybe you want your ads to stand out from your page, or maybe you want them to blend in. We’ll never tell you what colors you can and can’t use, as long as your users know they’re looking at “Ads by Yahoo!”

We’re not like those persnickety rock stars who insist that their dressing rooms be stocked with only the green M&M’s. Consider us colorblind, but in a good way.
 

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor