What do you do when your company’s in trouble, you’ve sold out search to Bing and most of your shareholders hate you. Naturally you roll out a big splashy ad campaign featuring annoying people and their dogs grinning at the universe with a background of loud primary colors that the 80’s somehow didn’t kill. You don’t actually make it clear what in particular you’re even advertising, except the idea that Yahoo puts you in the driver’s seat of something or other. Or at least that’s Yahoo’s big ad disaster.

Now do you see Google rolling out a big billboard campaign telling people to Google or go to YouTube or how convenient Gmail is? No, and that’s exactly the point. Print ads are not really a great way to drive internet traffic. Old media advertising is non-interactive for one thing. Obviously Yahoo is trying to redefine perception of its brand, or something. But Yahoo doesn’t have a brand perception problem. More people use Yahoo’s services anyway, and if anything the contrast tinkering with Yahoo Mail is more likely to drive users away than attract them.

Yahoo does not have a problem getting users. It has a problem making the whole thing pay. And running an AOL-like campaign aimed at the common man is fundamentally stupid. It’s Yahoo trying to piggyback on Microsoft’s antics, but Microsoft is mostly trying to sell physical products, Yahoo is trying to sell people on the Yahoo experience, or something like that, but idiots grinning with joy at being able to open their email or use Flickr to upload their dog’s pictures to the world, is not it. Neither is Jewel fronting a yodeling contest, whatever the hell’s that about. When you provide services, you get users. It’s a pretty simple formula, and not one that old media billboards can change a lot.