Everyone knows (or does everyone?) that Yahoo Messenger is FREE

A simple definition of FREE --> anything you get/acquire at NO COST!!!

But banner ads in yahoo messenger COSTS you the ff:

1) Additional Bandwidth
2) Extra Memory Usage
3) Our very precious TIME when we view/click these ads
4) Precious information about our pc (e.g. ip address
5) and the list could go on...

So the solution? Remove these banner ads....heh....and yes, IT's possible!! Uhmm..you can simply download Y.Adds Remover and let the software do the trick for you...but u can also do it manually (so u wont consume extra hard disk space)

FOR YAHOO MESSENGER 8.0 (can also work with lower versions)

//if you don't know what version u r currently using, simply log on to yahoo messenger and click on help > about

1. Launch Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> Regedit).
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\yahoo\pager\YUrl
3. Replacing the following registry values with dummy asterisk (*):

Messenger Ad
Webcam Upload Ad
Webcam Viewer Ad
Webcam Viewer Ad Big
Webcam Viewer Ad Medium
Change Room Banner
Conf Adurl
Chat Adurl

If the registry key doesn’t exist, simply create a new String Value registry key with the name by right clicking on the above registry branch and select New -> String Value.
# Close Registry Editor and launch Windows Explorer.
# Go to C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Cache\
# Locate the file urls.xml
# Clear the content of urls.xml
# Save the empty urls.xml file (it should be an empty file).
# Change the attributes of urls.xml to Read-Only by right clicking on the file and select properties, and click on Read-only.

Note: You can also do steps 5 to 9 only...and if it’s working, then the other steps are not necessary.

FOR YAHOO MESSENGER 9 BETA

1. Close Yahoo Messenger
2. Backup the file C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe (create a new copy)
3. Download a hex editor like HxD (http://mh-nexus.de/hxd/)
4. Open C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe in the hex editor
5. Go to the offset 295928 (in HxD: Search/GoTo)
6. Look at the right column and replace y from "y.m.s.g.r.a.d.s" with p
7. Save the file and close HxD.