Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) on Tuesday unveiled a new marketing campaign designed to promote the relationship between the struggling Internet giant, its users, and advertisers, as well as revive its stale image.

The new campaign, centered on the catch phrase, "It's Y!ou," is part of a renewed focus by Chief Executive Carol Bartz to revive the company's online advertising business, which continues to deteriorate amid the economic downturn and heightened competition from market leader Google Inc. (GOOG). Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele said the company plans to spend more than $100 million on the global push, and has already laid out plans for at least the next 15 months.

"We don't believe anyone else can own this message in the marketplace," Steele said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Since joining Yahoo in January, Bartz has tried to revive the struggling Internet giant by restructuring management, shedding non-core assets, striking a search pact with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and shifting resources toward its biggest properties, such as its flagship home page and e-mail service. Bartz told investors this summer the company was planning a major ad campaign this quarter to regain some of Yahoo's lost luster.

The move comes months after Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) launched its own $100 million marketing campaign for its Bing search engine, which it introduced earlier this summer to challenge Google. Yahoo and Microsoft entered into a 10-year search partnership agreement in July, as the players look to take on market leader Google.

Yahoo and Microsoft are seen facing intense antitrust scrutiny over their deal. Bartz said she doesn't see any change in the regulatory environment and stands by its targets. The companies previously said they expect the deal to close in early 2010.

Yahoo's campaign marks the first time in almost five years that the Internet giant has launched a major marketing effort, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said. He added that the company's brand has since gone "a little bit cold," particularly compared with start-ups such as social network Facebook Inc. and micro-blogging service Twitter Inc., which have captured the attention of consumers and the media.

"They need to remind people that they are still relevant," Munster said.

But the ad campaign will likely have little lasting impact if Yahoo's effort to revamp consumer products fails to make its core Web properties more compelling to users.

The company recently unveiled a redesigned homepage, as well as a series of upgrades to its e-mail, instant messaging and Internet search pages, part of its plan to revive its online advertising business which has been hit hard during the economic downturn.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said in July its second-quarter revenue fell 13% as the Internet portal's online advertising business continued to deteriorate.

Yahoo boasts that more than 500 million people visit the Internet giant every month and that people spend 12% of their online time at Yahoo sites. Steele said the company hopes to add new customers and defend its franchise. Yahoo said the goals are different depending on the region, noting that emerging markets represents an untapped area, while the company is looking to protect its user base in the Asia-Pacific region.

The ad campaign was rushed for Ad Week in New York, a period in which advertisers typically set their budgets for the latter part of the year, a point that analysts said was clearly not lost on Yahoo.

"This is more targeted to advertisers and agencies than consumers," said Colin Gillis, analyst at Brigantine Advisors.

Gillis said advertisers were eager to hear how Yahoo intended to make it easier for them to buy ads on the Internet portal's many properties.

"Consumers want good advertising," Bartz said, adding that the company is making it easier for companies to deliver more relevant ads. "This partnership of engaged users is what Yahoo stands for."

Still, others downplayed the relevance of the new campaign.

"It's irrelevant," Gillis said. "The real issue is to get more good engineers and reinvent the site."

-By Roger Cheng and Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2153; roger.cheng@dowjones.com

(John Kell contributed to this report.)

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