Yahoo! will only win in search if

a) more marketers spend money in online advertising in general and search in particular and
b) if they spend more on Yahoo! than other sites, and of course
c) more users use it.

Clearly, neither one is going according to plan, as Google continues to kick Yahoo!’s ass. But now, to further hurt Yahoo!’s own chances, News.com is reporting (via SAI) that Yahoo! actually advertised on radio to achieve its objectives. Need we think of Ask.com’s wonderful billboard strategy?

Who, may I ask, is the genius who thunk this up? When I say, as a shareholder, that YHOO has no credibility and its upper management has lost its marbles, am I crazy or stating the obvious?

To be fair, some disagree with me: The Yahoo search ads seemed to have the desired effect on one blogger, Luca Filigheddu, who wrote: “I’ll be honest, it works. If I hadn’t listened to it today, (I) wouldn’t ever (have) realized that Yahoo search had improved so much. Good.”

But, want something very troubling?  I have used Yahoo! less and less in the last 3 to 6 months.  Over 3 years ago I began using Gmail and never went back to Yahoo! mail… though when I started WatchMojo.com I began to use gmail for work… so that had more to do with it.

But even the last bastion of Yahoo!’s defenses has recently failed: I used to live on My.Yahoo! and now I almost spend no time on it (it got buggy after they changed the design then simply stopped using it).

Yahoo! should spend 200% on getting users like me to use Yahoo! products when we’re online and spend 0% of its resources on anything like TV, print, outdoors or radio.