Yahoo! has always been a major presence in the search-engine world, but has never lived up to its number-one rival, Google. While Google has dominated the search engine market for several years, Yahoo! has always remained second place, though a far distant one.

When Yahoo! and Microsoft announced partnership earlier this year, we here at Promoting Group were interested to see where the pair would go. Microsoft launched the Bing search engine while keeping the Yahoo! one alive, in an attempt to move in on Google’s market dominance.

Now, Yahoo! will launch a $100 million marketing campaign to try and rebuild its status as one of the major search engine and email platforms, using Bing’s encroachment on Google as its foundation. The campaign, which is rumored to be called It’s Y!ou, will promote Yahoo!’s many features outside of the search engine area, including personalized homepages and social media networking decks. Yahoo! will maintain its search engine capabilities, so as not to lose the small slice of the market they currently claim over Google.

The strongest claim that Yahoo! will have over both Google and Bing is the ability to completely personalize a homepage. Registered users will be able to check email, read and update social media platforms, choose daily horoscopes, read the scores and highlights from selected sporting teams, view the day’s weather forecast, read daily headlines from their chosen city or newspaper, and even select options such as having daily recipes, travel tips, or local event announcements appear on their homepages.

While users customize their homepages, Yahoo! will then also be able to use their selections as a guide for targeted advertisements. The user who chooses to learn about daily recipes might see ads for cookbooks, while the user who reads the scores for several sporting teams may see ads for ticket vendors or sporting equipment. The personalization feature works for both the user and for Yahoo! in this way, helping to generate revenue and appeal to people’s desire for personalized features.