• All Things D, Monday, September 14, 2009 1:23 PM

Call us timid, but we can't think of a marketing assignment we'd want less than the one on which Yahoo is about to embark. According to BoomTown, the beleaguered company is planning to launch a major ad campaign next week designed to change its image among advertisers and consumers, who may view it as a lost soul without clear purpose or direction.

If reports are correct, Yahoo is going to emphasize its size and scale, which is still unrivaled on the Web with regard to online display advertising. Indeed, for all its troubles and misadventures, Yahoo remains one of the largest sites on the Web, as well as a leader in graphical advertising, online media and communications.

Yahoo is reportedly out in the advertising market, buying tens of millions of dollars in ads online and offline to sell Yahoo.

"The whole push seems to be [intended] to remind people of vibrancy of the brand and exactly how huge its reach is," one knowledgeable source tells BoomTown. "It is less Yahoo is back than Yahoo has never left.

Similarly, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz noted in a recent earnings call that the company was hard at work on plans to reposition its "most valuable asset: Yahoo's brand."

The idea of scale we buy -- particularly with the advertiser community -- but if Yahoo's most valuable asset it in fact its brand, then the company is really in trouble.

Also, despite signing a search deal with Microsoft -- in which the software giant will take over the back-end technology, while Yahoo will sell search ads for both companies -- Yahoo could make the case for its search service, which it eventually plans to differentiate from Microsoft and Google with a cool user interface, design, features and functionality.

Yahoo is also likely to stick to its plan to push the idea of "your home on the Web" to consumers -- an idea that seems as rundown as the brand itself.

Yahoo should know well that marketing pushes for Web companies and their services are often without consequence. Just consider how many millions of dollars IAC has wasted on Ask.com. Microsoft, meanwhile, in the midst of a $100 million campaign for its new Bing search site, which is more likely to stifle Yahoo's forthcoming campaign than anything else.

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