How a product placement strategy worked for Yahoo

NEW YORK - Following high-impact results with its product placement in last year's The Apprentice, Yahoo rejoined Mark Burnett Productions and Donald Trump again this year to promote its Local Search service.

The move is of interest because it dramatically demonstrates the effectiveness of a product-placement campaign designed to sell a difficult-to-explain online service. Yahoo's local search is a special tier of search that functions much like a local yellow pages index to individual merchants in given metro markets across the U.S.

"The experience proved that you can take TV impressions and turn it into user engagement online, and then send the viewers to brick-and-mortar stores to make a purchase," said Jim Moloshok, senior vice president of entertainment and content relationships at Yahoo.

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