14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo has been talking about overhauling its services and image for several months now, ever since Carol Bartz took over as CEO, yet, besides an endless string of closures and a new homepage design, it hasn't had much to back up the talks. But, now, the company will apparently start a big advertising effort, ramping up through the third and fourth quarter and into the next year. The ad campaign is to be revealed at this year's Advertising Week, starting September 22 in New York, AllthingsD has found.
The ad campaign will focus on Yahoo's biggest strength, which it believes is the company's size and market share, hoping to make advertisers believe this as well. There aren't many details on the direction of the campaign, but the overarching idea is that Yahoo is the one-stop source for content online, the “home on the web” the company has been touting for the past several months. If more users start believing this and seeing the company as such, then, maybe, advertisers will be more likely to buy ads on Yahoo's extensive list of online properties.
Despite its troubles, both with shareholders and, to a certain degree, with revenue, Yahoo is still an Internet powerhouse and draws in enough traffic to compete with the major players online, Google, Microsoft and, more recently, Facebook. Its brand image has fluttered in recent years, though, and it never actually matched Google's at any point, so a major focus will be on strengthening its brand.
It's not alone in increasing its advertising spending, as Microsoft has reportedly spent close to $100 million promoting its revamped search engine Bing and may spend even more as it launches the updated Bing 2.0, on which details are still scarce. Even Google has had to dig into its pockets and spend for some good, old-fashioned advertising, including a billboard campaign, for its Google Apps suite for enterprises.