It's an unconventional move from an industry that rarely resorts to advertising to promote its product. Google, for instance, has notoriously spent £0.00 (that's roughly US$0.00) on advertising its search engine service and in its short ten years of existence has become the far and away frontrunner in the global search market.
However, Yahoo! appears to be confident that this tactic could win them more fans. Writing on the Yahoo! Search Blog, the search engine's VP Marketing, Raj Gossain, said:
"Yahoo! is committed to innovating in search and tens of millions of users choose Yahoo! Search every day. But we don't think that's enough. So today we're launching an integrated, nationwide, on and offline marketing campaign to remind the rest of the world (or at least everyone in the United States) that it's time to give Yahoo! Search a try."
He added: "We believe in our product and are convinced that when users take it for a spin, they'll like what they find."
Offline marketing will be in the form of radio ads, while online display ads will look like this:
This isn't the first time that a search engine has resorted to advertising to promote its service. Last year, Ask.com launched a widespread ad campaign, incorporating large billboard posters, radio spots and prominent TV adverts, to highlight its profile, spending roughly $100 million in the process. The ads ran towards the end of 2007, from September onwards but appeared to have little to no effect on Ask.com's US market share - in fact, comScore data for December showed that its percentage share had actually fallen by 0.3 per cent from November.
So will these new ads work for Yahoo!? So far, they haven't attracted much positive spin from industry analysts. Doug Caverly at WebProNews states, "We've got to give the ads a rather mediocre score overall," while Mashable's Adam Ostrow laments, "... history has taught us time after time, advertising search engines does not lead to meaningful customer gains."
But even if this advertising scheme doesn't help Yahoo! ramp up its share of the US search market, it's looks certain to accomplish one goal: reminding users that Yahoo! is still here. After a tumultuous year, overshadowed by the possibility of a hostile takeover by Microsoft, it's more important for Yahoo! to inflate its profile on the web than ever. These ads could work if it manages to rebuild a confident image - at least as a stark reminder to users that there are alternatives to Google. However, it increasingly seems that people are uninterested in deserting Google once converted, and Yahoo! will have to do something pretty special on our screens to reverse that trend.
