06 May 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Yahoo! knocks Google again in new TV ad

Not long after Yahoo! boss Carol Bartz criticised Google for its lack of diversity, the Silicon Valley company has mocked its competitor further in a new TV advertising campaign promoting the Yahoo! homepage.

The $85 million campaign contrasts the range of services offered on the Yahoo! site with the 'blank' and 'anonymous' alternative of a search engine homepage - one that Chris Matyszczyk of CNET News points out "looks mightily like that of Google."

The TV voice-over tells viewers: "When you look at this home page nothing looks back at you. You come to this place so you can leave." This is then directly contrasted with Yahoo!'s multi-faceted homepage, which "doesn't hustle you out the door" and where users can find "your favorite stuff all in one place."



It's a minor sleight to the Mountain View search seraph, but a telling one if Yahoo! is looking to further promote its diverse services to take on the competition. Yahoo! already has a global audience of over 600 million users, with 70 websites and services in 20 languages worldwide, and if Carol Bartz's recent comments to BBC News are anything to go by, the company may even be looking to take on Facebook as a leader of the social web - all accessible from the convenient hub of the Yahoo! homepage.

"Yahoo's mission now is to convince consumers that Yahoo! is the place where you go to navigate the entire Web," said Jeff Goodby, co-founder of the agency that produced Yahoo!'s latest ad.

Earlier this year, Microsoft similarly lampooned the public's familiarity with Google, in its TV ad for Bing in the UK that contrasted the "information overload" of Google search results with the more personalised results of the Bing 'decision engine.'

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