Yahoo has launched a series of radio advertisements in markets across the United States in an attempt to lure people into using Yahoo Search over the dominant Google Search, CNET is reporting. What’s next? Carrier pigeons?
The ads aim to point out that there are alternatives to doing a Google Search, and that Yahoo, in fact, displays their search results a bit differently. Yahoo states that users may get lost in all of the links Google provides, and that they may instead prefer a nice drop-down menu (such as Yahoo offers) to further refine queries.
The problem here is that first of all, Google has been working quickly to implement more of its “universal” search tactics that showcase results such as YouTube videos, making result pages more than just links. The second problem is that Yahoo is using a radio ad to convey this message. Verbally explaining a difference like this — especially to someone who still regularly listens to the radio, seems difficult at best. Besides, doesn’t Yahoo already have the radio-listening demographic on its side?
The latest numbers from comScore show Google controlling nearly 60 percent of all U.S. searches, while Yahoo is in second place with a mere 22 percent.
At least Ask.com launched a series of television ads in their attempt to take on the big boys of search. Yahoo’s campaign may be limited to winning over Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi.
[photo above is of Tesla]
6 Comments
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Luke G said:
An advertising impression is an impression; given some of the recent research on the (lack of) efficacy of online advertising, tv and radio ads can actually start to look pretty attrractive. The flood of advertising dollars to the internet is helping to keep old-school channels cheap, too. You can get $1.50 television CPMs (that’s 1MM views of your 30-second ad) through GoogleTV…that’s cheeap.
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MG Siegler said:
@Luke - certainly radio ads can be effective for various areas - I’m just not sure how much they will be for Yahoo trying to explain why their search result pages are visually better than Google’s.
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IdeaTagger said:
They have obviously decided that avid web users are already lost to google. The problem with targeting non-avid web users though is just that - they are not avid users. But perhaps Yahoo wants to capture them for when they do become frequent users.
Are Google search users a lost cause for Yahoo though? On the face of it yes, but what could get a chunk (not all mind) of them off Google? An incentive. Give the users a way to improve search results and then reward them by sharing the ad revenue. I posted many months ago on a possible approach to this at: http://www.ideatagging.com/scaling-mahalo-by-crowdsourcing-ratings/
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luca said:
I reported this a couple of days ago (as mentioned in the CNET Article) so I now know it’s a new thing (I arrived here in the bay area on March 7th and I was not sure whether it was a new ad or not). Anyway, an interesting move and it would be great to get some stats to check if it’s working or not.
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Pran Kurup said:
At least they are trying something new!
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MG Siegler said:
@ideatagger - fair points, but its a cost/reward situation at this point in my opinion. things on the Internet overall are pretty fluid, yahoo just needs to think outside the box a bit IMHO - not think back to the good old days of radio ads.
@luca - as far as I know this is new and probably too early to tell if its working at all, but that will be interesting to know for sure.
@pran - that is one way to look at it :)
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