The billboard space is managed by Clear Channel and currently is being offered at an extremely low rate of $65,000 per month. Yahoo, who has not been seeing that much growth over the recent years, said they are looking for “new and innovative ways” to advertise and market themselves.

Removing the classic billboard is just one more symbolic nail in the coffin for Yahoo.

For more pictures of the Yahoo billboard being removed, see MercuryNews.com.

Related Entries:

• Yahoo Q1 2011 Mixed: Display Up, Search Down, Revenues $1.06 Billion
• Yahoo Search Ads Now Fully Powered By Microsoft adCenter
• Bartz: “Google Is 90% Search, That’s A Fact” – Except It’s Not
• Yahoo’s Bartz Takes In $47 Million, Yang Gets One Dollar
• Yahoo & Microsoft Receive Go Ahead To Implement Search Deal
• A Year Later, Yahoo’s CEO Gives Herself A B-Minus
• Bartz: Yahoo’s Search Decline Due To Dead Toolbar Deals
• Yahoo, Microsoft Close Search Deal
• What’s Yahoo’s “Plan B” For Search?
• Can Yahoo Really Compete In Search By “Owning The Interface”?
• Yahoo’s Google & Microsoft Deals, Side-By-Side
• Microsoft-Yahoo Deals 2008 & 2009, Side-By-Side
• The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal, In Simple Terms

Today will be a light coverage schedule on Search Engine Land. Enjoy the day and the time with family and friends!

Google:

Yahoo:

Bing:

Ask.com:

Dogpile:

Related Logos:

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• Happy Thanksgiving From Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask & Others
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The deadline for U.S. and Canadian advertisers to use the companies’ transition tool is January 5. After that, you’re stuck with exporting and importing, though some search experts suggest the latter method might be more effective anyway.

The search alliance companies began asking advertisers to transfer their paid search campaigns as of the end of August. Advertisers who have a Yahoo Search Marketing account balance over $25 will see it automatically transitioned to adCenter in early 2011. Those whose balances are less than $25 will be refunded.

I got a chuckle out of this on Google. Do a search for bing it, and Google comes back with a suggestion of “bring it.” Is Google telling Bing to bring it on?

It’s all automated, of course. This is just Google’s spelling correction kicking in. Many more people are likely typing in “bring it” than “bing it,” so Google’s trying to do the right thing and help them. But it’s still funny to me.

Over at Ask, the same thing happens there:

So see, it’s not just Google being mean to Bing.

Yahoo also does something similar. It brings back results for for both “bring it” and “bing it” mixed together, along with an option for the searcher to get only “bing it” results:

What about Bing itself? No suggestion there that the searcher might want “bring it” rather than “bing it,” as you can see:

I suppose that makes sense. More people at Bing who enter “bing it” might really mean that rather than “bring it.”

Does anyone actually say Bing It? Yes, a few actually do. Our Yes, People Do Say “Bing It” — Barely story from last month covers this in more depth. Not many, but it is a term that some people are saying — and perhaps searching on.

Of course, many more people say “Google It.” How’s that play out at Bing? Just fine — its lists Google tops, with no special suggestions.

That’s not the case with Yahoo, which shoves a box encouraging you to “get straight to your answers here with Yahoo! Search” above Google’s listing (the same thing happens if you just search for “google,” as well):

Why’s Yahoo listing Google Italy rather than the main Google site? The “It” part of “Google It” is probably being interpreted as a search for www.google.it, the Italian version of Google.

Ask plays straight with a search for “google it,” but if you search for Google, it tries to keep you there like Yahoo does:

Yahoo’s done this type of thing in the past (see “You Could Go To Google,” Says Yahoo — But Why Not Stay Here?). To its credit, Bing — in a search for Google there — doesn’t try to convince you to Bing It instead.

When I saw the ad however it seemed completely misguided and off the mark.

Facebook is now Yahoo’s main rival and one that increasingly threatens to take its place for consumers. Indeed, Facebook is making a quiet if concerted push to become the homepage of choice.

As we’ve discussed many times over the past few years, major ad campaigns don’t usually translate into increased usage or traffic for search engines or Internet companies otherwise. Most companies have failed to learn that lesson repeatedly.

There are selected cases where a good product can build awareness and gain some momentum with advertising. Arguably Bing has been able to do that. However it’s still not clear how much the ads have contributed to Bing’s share growth. Apple is a company that spends millions on advertising to build awareness and the image of its consumer products, but its products are well designed and effective. Advertising for the Verizon/Motorola Droid has also been effective in building the Android brand and awareness.

But there are good products behind those campaigns. Many of Yahoo’s products and services are strong but many are equally in need of upgrades or improvement.

Yahoo’s previous $100 million “It’s You” campaign is widely considered a failure. The WSJ sums it up:

Fixing Yahoo’s battered image has been a top priority for its chief executive, Carol Bartz. Just months after she took the reins last year, she unveiled with much fanfare a $100 million campaign with the tagline “It’s You,” focused on personalizing the online experience.

The campaign failed to increase traffic to Yahoo’s home page or improve its share of the search market. In March, Ms. Bartz conceded it “didn’t have a really good call to action.”

Shortly after the campaign debuted last year, Yahoo ditched its ad agency, WPP PLC’s Ogilvy & Mather, and hired Omnicom Group Inc.’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners. (Ogilvy & Mather still helps Yahoo in some markets outside the U.S.).

I’m not going to argue that Internet companies should never advertise, but advertising can’t compensate for other challenges that are more fundamental. (Yahoo might have had more success advertising search filters and features, which have been out for a year but not widely known by the public, some of which Google seems to have duplicated with its new UI — or its mobile sites and homepage.)

But rather than trying to restore or improve its “brand image” with TV — and is that the place that its target audiences are these days? — Yahoo would do better to invest in building or improving specific products and/or making targeted acquisitions that support a larger product strategy or vision.

Yahoo seems focused on cost containment and brand marketing, however. Wall Street likes the cost containment part, but that is not going to “bring Yahoo back into the conversation,” to use CMO Elisa Steele’s words. Better user experiences and new or improved products that actually do things will.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: What Greg said :)

Seriously, the latest campaign is stunningly stupid for many reasons.

Let’s start with the entire “Ha Ha, Google has a blank home page” approach. When Yahoo’s ad agency did their no doubt extensive research to produce this ad, I wonder if they learned that in December, Google deliberately made its home page even simpler (see Official: Google Switches To Fading Home Page).

Who do you believe is smarter about what consumers want from Google, Google — which extensively tests any change it makes — or Yahoo’s third party ad agency.

Yeah.

OK, but maybe those same Google users being targeted will like the idea that Yahoo has all these other things they might not know about. Sure, maybe. But they’re unlikely to give up Google.

When Verizon ran Droid ads against the iPhone, it attacked real problems that iPhone users had with the iPhone, such as the inability to multitask. Yahoo’s attacking Google for being simple which is probably want many Google users love most. And if you love simple, showing as the video does how all this clutter starts to literally roll all over the place just doesn’t seem a telling point.

How about the issue that the last ad campaign, according to Bartz herself, didn’t have a good call to action? Well, I saw the original campaign when it was debuted at a press conference last year. The message presented felt like the same message I’d seen Yahoo put out for years — and asked Bartz about it. Her reply:

I’m actually happy that you think it’s somewhat the same, because that’s what Yahoo stands for.

Um, OK — except now, it turns out that campaign was a waste of millions of dollars. To make up for it, the solution appears to be that the wrong ad agency was selected, so let’s get a new group in that has all the answers.

And that’s the key — why’s this ad agency going to get it even better. As Greg says, ads often seem to fail to work with internet companies. With search companies, they really fail to work. Consider these very clever ads from 1998:

It’s like a video deadpool of companies that hoped clever ad agencies and TV spots would keep them alive in search. That didn’t happen.

Currently, Bing is having some nice success with its own Bing TV ads — but that’s a “success” of gaining roughly 2-4% of share. That’s huge for tiny Bing, but it’s tiny compared to what Yahoo hopes to get. And we still don’t know if they’ll keep it when the ads stop.

Postscript from Greg: We received a note from one of Yahoo’s PR firms that there were some factual errors in the story above. Apparently the video isn’t actually a real TV spot. Rather, according to the missive I received, “The video highlights the philosophy & possible creative for Yahoo!s campaign.”

The PR representative also said that the “$75-$85M spend range is a subset of the $100M Yahoo! announced last year. It’s not incremental.”

OK. We’re glad Yahoo didn’t already blow its $100 million budget and prepare to blow $75 million more. And we’re glad the company has an opportunity to rethink the “philosophy & possible creative” of the campaign.

It’s noteworthy because Yahoo has shut down its offices over the holidays as a cost-cutting measure. But paying for luggage at two busy airports on one of the busiest travel days of the year? That should cost Yahoo a nice, little chunk of change.

Yahoo, Bing, and Google have also been trying to earn goodwill with free WiFi in select locations on a temporary basis. Tis the season to bribe users for their loyalty!

Postscript: Yahoo didn’t tell us the cost of this effort today, but they did clarify how it’s working. A spokesperson called it a “spontaneous effort” that involved Yahoo employees paying the luggage fees of San Jose travelers using the American Airlines ticket counter this morning “because they had flights at the time we were at the airport, and passengers were checking in.” This afternoon, Yahoo employees are at SFO but the spokesperson doesn’t know what airline(s) they’re working with.

If you’re watching TV today, you may see this new “Anthem” ad:

Yahoo says the spot will air on all the major TV networks and top cable channels, and will begin airing in the UK and India on October 5. Other countries will get the ad in 2010.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: And in today’s Wall Street Journal, I came across this huge ad in the middle of the paper:

Below, zooming in on the smaller text in the lower right corner of the ad:

For those who can’t read the image, the text says:

It’s Yahoo.com, one of the most known, most visited sites on the planet. It crosses cultural boundaries, language boundaries, age gaps, gender gaps, and more. Which may be why more than 500 million people around the world visit Yahoo! every month.

It’s Yahoo!, redesigned, refined, reinvented, tested, and optimized to create what we belive is the most personally relevant Internet experience ever. With a homepage you can shape, your way. An Inbox that delivers email, your way. Search that finds things, your way. And all of it now mobile, to take things on the go.

Visit Yahoo! today. It’s a destination you may be familiar with. But it’s a whole new place.

It’s Y!ou

On the whole I’d have to say the earlier Steele speech was unimpressive and too familiar sounding. Maybe it’s because they’ve been previewing the messaging informally for some time. And maybe because the themes and creative of the new campaign — though impressively polished — are much like the old and unsuccessful “Life Engine” campaign of 2004. But there were also too many cliches and platitudes in the speech and it was delivered without convincing passion. The word “passion” was used repeatedly but not equally evident from the podium or in the audience as Steele spoke to a largely unresponsive group of advertisers and agencies.

One of the major themes of the talk and new campaign is that Yahoo will help you “navigate life.” Steele rejected the distinction between online and offline: “the Web and your world are inseparable.” In parallel there was a discussion of Yahoo’s reach across the three screens: PC, mobile and TV accordingly. There was a lot of emphasis on communications but also on the new Yahoo homepage as evidence of this new personalized approach — a dashboard of sorts to help organize the internet.

I’m sure there have been numerous consumer focus groups leading up to the new campaign. And while many people would argue the $100 million (or more) would be better spent on engineers, I’m not going to deny that advertising helps shape perceptions. Yahoo’s got a stronger and “friendlier” consumer brand than AOL, Microsoft and maybe even Google at this point. So the campaign dollars may be well spent in maintaining that image.

Apple spends hugely on advertising and marketing to support a brand perception in the market, at a company level and on the level of specific products. However Apple’s products deliver and fulfill the messaging. Here that’s not the case to the same degree.

The challenge and the problem is that Yahoo sites and services must actually fulfill the promise of helping people organize and navigate all the information out there. People are overwhelmed by information overload and “the paradox of choice.” They do need trusted sources, they do need simplification, they do need assistance. But I’m not sure that Yahoo delivers as promised.

Yahoo has lots of reach and lots of top traffic destinations: news, sports, mail, finance, etc. But Yahoo needs to actually create best of class tools and it needs to find simple ways to help consumers integrate all the information coming at them. The homepage is a good start, but it’s not enough. Search Pad is useful but not the “kick ass” product it needs to be to really set Yahoo apart.

There is a disconnect between right-sounding rhetoric and the reality of Yahoo today. I hope that the company can close the gap and be the personalized destination that it aspires to be.

Along with a new search format, Yahoo has rolled out a new “It’s You” marketing push with clever slogans like “The Internet Is Under New Management, Yours.” The company is holding a press conference shortly, and I’m here liveblogging it. Let’s do this.

We’re waiting. So are you.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz up, welcoming people. Wishing it were fashion week but not advertising week here (gets laughs). Yahoo really is committed to be the center of people’s lives online. Like 600 million people come each month (or was that day?). It’s a lot, get it.

They want to be entertained, informed. … you can hear that’s exactly how we’re positioning the company.

We’re pleased we can start today to talk about the new campaign.

Elisa Steel CMO up. Yahoo sees two pieces, “My World” & “The World.”

Bringing the best of the web in one place (that’s Yahoo) and not necessarily just Yahoo’s own info.

“that’s where the yodal is” Yahoo says they call it, where sorry buzzword buzzword value of consumers and intersecting with them.

Only Yahoo can be associated with combining The World and My World. Keep things meaningful and memorable. Tough thing to get that message to a broad audience. You, you, you, you (I feel like I’m in a Blues Brothers song every time Yahoo does this you you thing).

Showing the “It’s You” motto. Well, “I’s Y!ou” because Yahoo hasn’t lost that stupid exclamation mark. That would have been a campaign. Kill the exclamation mark.

It’s about every you around the globe. Every you in every country in every geography. Easily translatable and locally relevant around the world (I can see Yahoo’s ad team mentally patting themselves on the back for avoiding global translation problems). Multi-channel campaign but grounded in the “digital discipline.” Lots of ads on Yahoo.com and around the net (say Google?)

Looking at creative. Internet under new management, it’s you (like I said above). Copy on one, “Introducing you, the new chief executive. It’s you.”

Another: “This time it’s personal.” All represents a commitment from Yahoo that they’ll deliver on the relevance of the personal you.

Seeing much more of this stuff, but you can see it yourself. Go here. Note that the server is down right now.

You can use the internet to navigate life. That’s what Yahoo brings to you. One way to express isn’t just still photography. They have video, too! And we’ve just watched it.

Time for the actual Q&A. We have Carol, Elisa plus Hilary Schneider, executive VP. Tapan Bhat, SVP, Penny Baldwin, SVP of global integrated marketing.

Question on marketing budget. Budget is over 100 million for the campaign. US, Canada, UK, France, Hong Kong, missed some of the other countries.

Question from some Erick dude from TechCrunch. How does TechCrunch get to be on the front of Yahoo all the time. No, he didn’t say that. Talk about search, display and “is there anything you won’t sell.”

Hilary: On ad trends, starting to see a stablization but not bold recovery. Bartz: “We’re bumping around the bottom.” Bartz: The focus of the company is to really engage … that we’re ready to put our signature on the bottom of every page that goes out on the internet that says Yahoo … things that might have been a good idea a few years ago have to think more about. Is there anything you won’t sell? Of course not (I think that was the quote — tone of well, you’re always open to stuff).

Now balancing my video camera on a water bottle. Why’d I forget my tripod. I know, you don’t care.

Question on competitive threat about Google and ad exchange. Hilary: We start with the fact we really pioneered the display marketspace. Proud they have the largest exchange. Market is fragmented. We welcome Google and connecting with them because ultimately its about how do we create an open marketplace.

Question: why hit reset button with consumers when some think Yahoo issues are with advertisers. Bartz: “Advertisers follow consumers” (nice point). “You always need to build circulation” This is a way of building circulation. We also by doing this very personalized approach. We’re expanding the relationship to get everyone in the world excited.

Elisa: Need to get consumers to “check out Yahoo again … because the experience is different than what they remember from 5 years ago.”

Question: what about video. Bartz: video crucial, way to entertain, inform, so there’s a big emphasis inside Yahoo on our video platforms, our video serving, way to serve.

Question: What are metrics of success. Elisa: Will run in 15 countries I think for 18 months. Try to measure emotional connection and bond. And are they driving traffic and getting them to spend more time on the key sites they know and love on Yahoo.

Question on new search experience. Tapan: It’s really about creating personal relevance. Done some work on search monkey, allow to highlight some innovations that Yahoo search has done. If you’re searching for information on how to kayak, there are very interesting things like local restaurants. By allowing to filter by certain sites or see snippets, we create a much more relevant campaign.

Question: will search be in the ad campaign? Penny: brand, brand only, brand benefit and product driven communication. Product communications will have a huge role, yes (but not clear what’s on search).

Question: Is Zimbra being shot? Bartz: We don’t comment on if something’s being shot or not. That’s not good business practices. Says Zimbra tech is very important to Yahoo mail system and that was one reason Yahoo bought them.

Question: How is this campaign different from ones in the past, say connected life. It feels like I’ve heard before

Elisa: hasn’t been here i the past. this is incredibly different. this sin’t a marketing campaign of a short term nature. Carol’s staff and carol are all behing the concept of personal relevance. If this wa just a marketing cmapaign or a slogal, we’ve really failed. It’s a company campaign.

Bartz: Yahoo has evolved over the past 14 years as the internet has evolved. We were all so glad we could search the web and find things at the Library Of Congress. But how much of that do you need now (IE, you want more local things, not look and how amazing you what’s there in general). This is a highlyly evolved bigger concept, now the internet .. i can undestand it has a similar tone, because it’s what Yahoo is. We’re taking it farther than it’s been. I’m actually happy that you think it’s somewhat the same, becasue that’s what Yahoo stands for. 76% of US pop comes to Yahoo. When there’s braking tnews, they know to come.

Question: Clarify the role of search. Is that an attraction or something you provide just if people get there for other things?

Bartz: I view search, teh algorithmic side of word as how often you cralw the web, how deep, how much you gather up .. whne we relaly think about search, we think about those 10 blue links. We used to be excited about that? We used to get all these answers and then realize they’r enot good. Views search as an intel chip … but the experienc that HP wraps around those chips is differen than what Dell wrap around them. trying to wrap the Yahoo experience aorund that. Search is vital for us. we;re wstable at like 19% of the busines. Users are happy. If we continue to impress them, we’ll continue to drive relvance for them, perform a service with and form them .. and so search is incredibly important to us and our advertiers, but what is most important is that we dirve upstream even those the plumbing is down here.

Sorry those are scrambled, two above questions were mine, hard to type and also look at someone answering you. I’ll upload video on those later (shaky though it will be with my water bottle tripod).

Question: how do people want to customize? Tapan: Home page most, people want to have it personalized, but they don’t actually do it a ton. So you have to incrementally get them to do this (you know, how like Excite asked for your zip code back in 1996).

Question: Looking at ways to bring in “external text messaging services”.  Tapan: home page strategy is that you should be able to pull in whatever you want. So are there RSS feeds.

Question: From the earlier keynote today, they showed a way to let you “add value” to every page on the web. Tapan: that was just a concept, not active right now.

Question: What involvement from Ogilvy? Elisa: Embarked on this a few months ago with Carol and her staff. Then brought in Landor & Associates for strategy and Ogilvy for creative.

Question on Microsoft-Yahoo Deal – Bartz: going as expected, got a very common second request, stand by original prediction of April of next year.

Question: “I think people decided Yahoo had a cloud over its head … we need something shiny and different … Yahoo is well loved outside NY and Silicon Valley. Inside, they all go mooo ohhhh. In passport control, people tell her stories about Yahoo and yodal. Jesus, I want to transfer you guys. Why are you so cynical about us. Why aren’t you cynical about Google? .. see, you got it. You’ve got me pissed off” [so glad i turned the video on, promise, I'll upload it]

Question: When expect to see returns from users and earnings? Elisa: We’ll expect some change from users in next three months. From brand level, that’ll be closer than 12 months. Earnings: We wouldn’t comment on that today. Bartz: Don’t just focus on the campaign. There’s product promise behind that. There’s going to be a combined offer.

Question: about viral efforts (I think) and something else: Bartz: “It’s our business to try hard .. shame on us if we don’t.” and “We have our own viral effect.”

Tapan: This is not just an ad campaign. This is a fundamental way we build out products [in 2005, that was make it all social. But important, Yahoo's marketing message is overshadowing that Bartz is trying to reconfigure the company itself that build stuff that makes people feel they can control all the information they need out there. You know, organize the world's information and make it universally .... you."

Elisa talking about how consumers around the world love the brand, they yodel (people really do this? apparently!).

Question: Where do you want to be a year, two years from now. Bartz: Before, people were very focused on their property. There wasn't a network Yahoo effect. Or when I came, it didn't seem like that. These plans are very integrated. Elisa said I'm not putting this out here unless product is going to do them with quality something and pride. It isn't about throwing this up on a site. It's about engaging the consumer ... can get things in one place, easier to use, easy to customize [have to say, it's not new message, but Yahoo doesn't have a push that no one's doing now. Google's not saying organize your life; Microsoft isn't really; nor is Facebook. Real question is are people already doing it in a way that makes them feel they don't need to change].

Question: Yahoo stock down 8%, Google’s up 16% — why isn’t Wall Street behind Yahoo. Bartz: Yahoo and Google are different companies. They are different businesses. The investors are somewhat like you guys, let’s wait and see. This direct comparison with Google, we aren’t comparable companies. It’s our job to drive our stock price up separate from what Google does.

Question: Who would you like to be compared to? Bartz: Yahoo. The closest one is AOL. Google maniacal about running an algorithm. We’re personal. If you go to Yahoo India, feels part of India, not some one world approach. That’s not Facebook’s strategy, that’s not Twitter’s strategy. That’s not to say we’re not part of a greater tech sector … by Yahoo is the only brand that can make the promise of uniting your world and the world … more and more and more, we’re going to focus on the use side. Getting this easy personalization and excitement about managing the web from one place is the core of our focus.

Question of stock sales. Bartz: I didn’t sell anything. Got stock, and when some of it vested, some of it is kept by Yahoo for taxes by company. Like if you got 100 shares, 20 would be held back. But it gets recorded as if it is a share. I haven’t sold one penny of Yahoo stock. And thanks for asking, because it pissed me off when they said I sold.

And we’re done.

Techmeme has some coverage on today’s announcement forming now, and I’m sure other live blogging and news reports will be appearing. So check them out, too.

Postscript: Very sorry, my video was lost due to some glitch with my Flip camera. Sigh.

It’s not real. But I sure wish it were, Google going all Kanye West on people searching for Taylor Swift.

In the mockup above you can see Google responding “I’m really happy for you, and I’m gonna let you finish your search, but did you mean: beyonce” instead of the usual “Did You Mean” spelling correction.

The mockup is from the I Am Bored site, which I found via this discussion by Jess Lee on FriendFeed. And while that might entirely fictional (trust me, it is — I’ve tried to reproduce it in various ways. Not. Real.), Yahoo kind of goes all Kanye on its competitors in real life.

Search for Google on Yahoo, and you get this:

Search for Bing, and you get this:

In both cases, Yahoo puts up a box to let you search through Yahoo rather than going directly to its competitors. It’s gonna let you finish going to them, but first….

Kanye’s actually following in Yahoo’s footsteps. Yahoo’s been interrupting searches like this for ages.