On September 22nd, Yahoo! launched a $100 million ad campaign to promote its new homepage and their "It's Y!ou" slogan.
These new ads seem to couple the exciting and eclectic culture of Yahoo! with the suggestion that the brand is empowering the user (i.e. A campaign that declares "The internet is under new management: yours").
Users have noticed a slightly more user-friendly interface on the Yahoo! homepage since July of 2009– an interface that allows for more customization and less clutter (Yahoo! removed of many of the links to Yahoo! services that previously saturated the page).
Yahoo! has never been renowned for being exceptionally user-friendly. Their September ad campaign appeared to be an effort to inform the public of the company's intention to change for the better. However, initial data from comScore indicates that growth in numbers of visitors was relatively unchanged following the campaign's launch.
Yahoo! spent $100 million telling consumers they are more user friendly instead of spending $100 million becoming more user friendly.
And, admittedly, the homepage's new interface and user experience is moderately better. However, I wonder if putting less into advertising their usability and more into creating usability would have provided Yahoo! with the increase in traffic they clearly did not achieve with the campaign.