• Ad Age, Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11 AM

"From this moment on, search overload is officially over," declares a TV ad from Microsoft that launches its campaign to compete head-on against Google in the search-engine wars. Titled "Manifesto," the 60-second spot features montages of Google-owned YouTube clips juxtaposed against some news clips about the financial crises. It makes the point that its "Decision Engine" can "cut through the c[rap]."

Gayle Troberman, gm for advertising and customer engagement at Microsoft, tells Abbey Klaassen that the ad attempts to tap into the zeitgeist and elicit an emotional response about a concept that, on its face, is not emotional. "Search has been about number of results and access to everything, and when you talk to people, they don't want everything anymore," according to Troberman. "Less is the new more. ... [People] want the right things for them."

Microsoft will drive home the point about too much information -- or "search overload syndrome" -- in a second round of ads that breaks in a week or two. In the ads, a person mentions something that could be considered a keyword (such as "Hawaii") and another starts spouting off the kinds of facts and related topics that could surface in a search-results page.

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