Here we go! Truly targeted advertising - at its finest I might add. If Snap can honestly make ads and content into something that is perceived as seamless, they would be heroes to many overnight.

SAN FRANCISCO - Internet search engine Snap.com is hoping to expand its sparse audience by making Web surfing more like channel surfing on a TV, but the startup might attract more attention with another change that further blurs the lines separating ads from listings retrieved by objective formulas.

Under a new format to be unveiled Monday, Snap will lump together search results financed by advertisers in the same column as Web links drawn from algorithms programmed to disregard financial incentives and find the most relevant response to a user’s request.

As an example of how Snap’s approach might blend results, a response to “used cars” might rank a result bought by Carsmart.com directly above a noncommercial link to Usedcars.com.

That combination is a departure from leading Internet search engines like Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, which isolate advertising results in shaded boxes at the top of the page or group them together in a separate stack to the right under the heading “sponsored results.”

The distinctions are meant to comply with Federal Trade Commission guidelines urging that Internet search engines provide “clear and conspicuous” distinctions separating their noncommercial results from ad-driven links.

Snap, launched in late 2004, originally intended to place a light gray “sponsored result” disclaimer next to the Web addresses of all the ads that crop up. Just hours before the new site’s debut, Snap decided to make the disclaimers even more prominent by changing the coloring to bright orange and increasing the size of the type…. Source: AP