Yahoo to Spend $100 Million in New Marketing Campaign

More details about Yahoo's huge marketing campaign to be launched soon are beginning to leak out. The campaign, which is expected to be officially announced this week, will have a budged of around $100 million, in line with Microsoft's spending with the Bing campaign, and will reinforce the idea that Yahoo is the user's “home on the web.” The focus will be on the freshly redesigned homepage and the tag line will apparently be “It's You!,” with the 'Y' coming straight out of Yahoo's logo. The exclamation point will also stand out graphically.

The campaign was initially announced to investors by Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz during the last quarter's earnings conference call. She then said that the company would roll out a significant marketing and branding campaign and, though she didn't specify an exact figure, it would have a substantial budget.

It is now expected that the campaign will roll out very soon, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the first elements are already beginning to pop up, for example, with a huge Yahoo sign in Times Square. The campaign will be formally announced tomorrow, during the Advertising Week in New York.

The ad campaign has been created by Ogilvy & Mather of the WPP Group, though Yahoo has so far declined to comment on the matter. The new homepage will be the center of the campaign and the focus will be on personalization and customization. One interesting aspect is the greater emphasis on social networking, which, despite the fact that Yahoo has pretty much given up on creating its own social network, is still very important for the company.

Yahoo is also expected to reveal new plugins for its homepage during the campaign, which would allow users to further customize it. It is expected to last several months, with an initial push followed by an increase in spending over the fourth quarter and into next year.