The Yahoo Ad Onslaught Begins

By  |  Monday, September 28, 2009 at 1:33 pm

Yahoo plans to spend $100 million marketing itself, and it’s posted the ad that kicks off the new campaign:

If you showed an alien this ad, he (she? it?) would come to the conclusion that Yahoo is a place where nobody’s old, bald, fat, or ugly–and where nobody uses computers. Whatever problems Yahoo has, they don’t avoid a shortage of users; I think it’s less about encouraging folks to use the site and more about attempting to glamorize the Yahoo name and remind marketers that a heck of a lot of folks use Yahoo for all sorts of purposes everyday.

Fair enough, I guess-but the emphasis on personalization (“It’s You”) feels like it’s still catching up with the reality of today’s Internet, where there’s hardly anything that isn’t really customizable, and where stuff created by real people is a primary attraction almost everywhere. If you stripped out the explicit Yahoo references and told me this was an ad for Windows Live, I’d believe you.

Your thoughts?

 
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6 Comments For This Post

  1. Alan Ralph Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    After watching that, you’ll know the company name, but won’t have a flippin’ clue what they do. Pretty much like most TV advertising these days, then… 😀

  2. Annkur Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    MY ISP – You Tele might be interested in using this 🙂

  3. ediedi Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    It could very well be an ad for an ISP: The Internet: It’s you.
    All internet-related ads are too general, to the point that they really are pointless. In essence its telling me that I can find stuff, every kind of stuff on the internet – wow.
    Even if the ad was made to emphasise difference/uniqueness in some way, Yahoo really couldn’t diferentiate themselves from the other comparable services, except through the fact that they are not the best not the most notorious. It’s a lose-lose situation.

  4. tom b Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    “In essence its telling me that I can find stuff, every kind of stuff on the internet – wow.”

    Except they farmed out the actually FINDING stuff part to …. Microsoft!
    Morons.

    I like Flickr and Yahoo Finance. I tolerate the E-mail– even though the interface gets suckier on an almost DAILY basis because I’ve had the account forever. The rest of Yahoo should just sink itself into a carbon dioxide recapture facility somewhere in a deep ocean trench.

  5. Pascal Cuoq Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    It’s fine to target the younger slice of the population, but using the verb “to buzz” as something a person would do may be trying a little too hard.

    I’m not sure why advertisers keep making up ways younger people might talk. Sure makes them sound out of touch.

  6. Owen Says:
    September 29th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    “Except they farmed out the actually FINDING stuff part to …. Microsoft!
    Morons.”

    Yahoo didn’t farm it out. Microsoft will only be running the technology of serving up the ads to Yahoo. You’ll still be able search on Yahoo just like before. In fact Yahoo has the ability to change out the look and feel of how the ads are served up from Microsoft/Bing. So if anything, the money that Yahoo saves on not having to serve up ads (the behind the scenes technology which is VERY expensive), can be spent on making the look and feel of the ads more pleasing (adding video, images, etc) for searchers. The more engaged and relevant the ads are, the more people will click on those ads. Yahoo can sit back and save serving costs while getting paid 88% of the click by Microsoft.

    I think it’s a great deal.