Yahoo turns to radio ads to lure Google Web searchers

Updated 10 a.m. PDT with quotes from radio ad.

Yahoo is running radio ads in the San Francisco Bay Area and several other markets in an effort to get more people to use its search engine instead of Google's.

(Credit: Yahoo)

"Search engines like Google get you lost in all the links, but not Yahoo search," one of the ads says before noting that Yahoo offers drop-down menus with related suggestions as the searcher types.

"You won't find that on your Google page!" it says, before ending with the trademark Yahoo yodel.

The radio spots started running in the Bay Area a week ago, said Raj Gossain, vice president of marketing for the Yahoo Search team. He wouldn't say what other markets are involved or how much the company is spending on the spots. Ads are running online, too.

Apparently, the ads are not a response to the unsolicited Microsoft bid for the company, as Gossain said Yahoo began planning the ad campaign in December. Microsoft went public with its offer on February 1. The companies are talking, but Yahoo is holding out for more money.

Yahoo not only wants to show off new features added to its search engine in October, like search assist, short cuts, and multimedia results, but also to remind people that there is an alternative to Google.

"The rationale is we feel like we've built a better mouse trap and, quite frankly, we wanted to remind users that there really is a choice in search engines," Gossain said. "We've got a better, simpler, easier-to-use mouse trap."

Gossain acknowledged that it is hard to get people to change their habits, especially for something like Web search where people seem to go on auto-pilot.

The radio ads will "introduce Yahoo search to folks who perhaps haven't tried us in awhile," he said. "We've got capabilities in our search experience that the competition doesn't have."

The Yahoo search ads seemed to have the desired effect on one blogger, Luca Filigheddu, who wrote: "I'll be honest, it works. If I hadn't listened to it today, (I) wouldn't ever (have) realized that Yahoo search had improved so much. Good."

[PortVista-19095313035016904102]

Another non-news item from CNET! Yahoo!

Either CNET exists in a vaccuum or the fact that Yahoo spends a few thousand dollars on radio ads in San Francisco, about .0001% of their advertising budget, is somehow news worth putting up on the front page of the website.

[Kev Orng]

Yahoo, sure, but not MicroHoo

I will happily step up my use of Yahoo for search, although I still use Google calendar and Docs. But if Microsoft manages to be successful in its bid to take over Yahoo, then I will cross them off my list. Because even though I am risking the taunts and barbs of the blinkered MS apologists, I simply don't trust Microsoft, I don't like their business practices, I resolved long ago not to use any of their services free or paid, and "MicroHoo" will not get my money or my page views. <br />Until then, I'm happy to encourage people to use Yahoo if it helps them, even a teeny bit, to fend off MS.

[artie V]

How soon they forget

Hilarious to think that Yahoo is positioning itself as the scrappy contender new to the game. If I remember correctly, it was Yahoo as the incumbent that dropped the ball to Google and others...

[deepanjan_nag]

I've used Yahoo! search for ages

It's very effective and gets the job done well. Period.