Yahoo! kicks off major ad offensive across Europe

Yahoo! is to launch a major pan-European marketing push for its range of products and services.

The promotion is the first major consumer marketing campaign by the brand in years and comes after months of uncertainty for the internet company following Microsoft's failed takeover bid.


The campaign aims to reposition Yahoo! in key territories - the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain - and promote its range of services, such as Yahoo! Mail, photo-sharing site Flickr and user-generated information service Yahoo! Answers.

Yahoo! hopes to re-engage with users through a series of online and offline campaigns that will run over the coming months ahead of a major push towards the end of the year. Kristof Fahy, VP of marketing for Yahoo! Europe, will lead the project.

It has appointed digital agency Poke as lead creative agency for the project. Media agency Carat will be responsible for planning/buying.

Ian Tait, planning director of Poke, said, "Yahoo! has a massive diversity of products and services that it needs to make more of without over-simplifying things. The opportunity is for it to take these to the mainstream."

Yahoo! is keen to gain ground in the marketplace as rivals Microsoft and AOL step up their own consumer marketing campaigns.

The embattled media company reported a 19% drop in second-quarter post-tax profits to $131m (£66m).

It spent £391,513 on marketing in the 12 months to June 2008, of which £193,681 went online, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Source - NMA