It's You - Yahoo launches $100m brand push

Yahoo is set to begin a $100m (about £61m) brand campaign - It's Y!ou - in an attempt to consolidate its position as a giant of the web.

The thinking behind 'It's You' (I'll get rid of the ugly exclamation mark now) is to persuade consumers that Yahoo products can become completely personal to them - after all, everyone wants their surfing experience to revolve around them, not to feel like they're being lumped into a 'one-size-fits-all' service.

Soon you'll be seeing billboard posters, online adverts and even TV advertising, if you're a Sky customer. The redesigned Yahoo homepage, formerly a beta product, is officially rolled out this week. But given the dominance of Google, is this too little too late?

Of course, in the current financial climate $100m is a lot of money. However, if Yahoo had announced a $100m brand campaign five years ago, I'm not sure it'd have even made the pages of the Financial Times.

Yahoo has some strong products - Yahoo Mail users seem to be a loyal bunch, with many people I know having had a @yahoo.co.uk email address since the last century. Flickr is without doubt one of Yahoo's stronger offerings, with a massive user base and a newly redesigned interface.

According to the company, Yahoo's News service is growing faster than the BBC's. Yahoo also said that its European audience was growing very quickly and is now bigger than its US audience. So the company has plenty to shout about.

But in some areas, Yahoo can't compete. For example, Google has the search market pretty much tied up, and this is unlikely to change any time soon. Many people are creatures of habit and it's for good reason that the verb 'to Google' was inserted into the English dictionary in 2006, long after Google had asserted its complete dominance of the search market.

Getting people to change their habits will be difficult, but increasing brand recognition is somewhat easier, even if it is expensive. TV adverts with good visual and audible hooks will play a key part in this.

All in all it seems to be a bold move, and if Yahoo is to make inroads into the market shares of its traditional rivals - Google, Microsoft et al - then boldness is definitely required.

The campaign will begin in earnest in the UK on 5 October - only time will tell how effective it will be. But I couldn't help thinking that the phrase "It's You" was one I'd heard in an advert before.

Then I remembered this.

Do you think the $100m campaign can revive Yahoo? Have your say in theWeb User forums.