It’s not likely the announcement of Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings later today will be quite as exciting as its Open Hack Day in Taiwan this past weekend, but BoomTown will try to make those numbers and the conference call afterward with CEO Carol Bartz as entertaining as possible.

Still, while recent results from both Google (GOOG) and, especially, Apple (AAPL), have been pretty impressive, no one is expecting Yahoo to blow the roof off.

So, here’s what to look for:

Wall Street is estimating that Yahoo (YHOO) will earn just under seven cents a share, with revenue of $1.12 billion. This compares with nine cents and $1.33 billion in the same period a year ago.

Some whisper numbers peg the results at close to 10 cents a share, which would be a sensation, especially given the still-recovering state of display advertising, which is Yahoo’s bread and butter.

Also likely to be asked about is the recent decline in Yahoo’s search share. According to comScore (SCOR), its share in the important U.S. market dipped to 18.8 percent in September, even as both Google and Microsoft (MSFT) saw small gains.

Yahoo is set to start an online search and advertising partnership with Microsoft, as soon as regulators give it the thumbs up, as seems likely.

And analysts will likely ask about the effectiveness of Yahoo’s $100 million marketing campaign, designed to revitalize its image, which it is ramping up.

But Bartz has also been cutting costs and streamlining staff and operations–her strong suit–which could improve the bottom line.

Yahoo shares, while up 39 percent for the year, are down 2.7 percent for the month, even as other tech firms are up.

The stock is down 1.7 percent today, hovering just under $17 a share.

Whether the results and what Yahoo has to say about the year ahead will affect the share price remains to be seen.

Until then, here is a link to a very good Q&A interview Bartz did with the New York Times about her management style, which was posted over the weekend.

Money quote, from the ever-quotable Bartz:

“I have the puppy theory. When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say something right then because you don’t say six months later, ‘Remember that day, January 12th, when you peed on the carpet?’ That doesn’t make any sense.”

In a shift that is sure to be much commented on by the advertising industry, Yahoo has tapped Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to take the lead for creative, advertising, digital marketing and strategic planning efforts.

The San Francisco-based Goodby, which is owned by the Omnicom Group (OMC), is known for its innovative ideas and has done such memorable campaigns as the Slowsky turtles for Comcast (CMCSA), the weird folk of Emerald Nuts, owned by Diamond Foods (DMND)–as well as campaigns for tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Netflix (NFLX).

Also, of course, the terrifically memorable “Got Milk?” campaign.

Perhaps a “Got Yahoo?” campaign is in the future?

Until now, the top job of goosing Yahoo’s tarnished brand, as part of a recently launched $100 million marketing push, has been helmed by Ogilvy & Mather, a unit of the WPP Group (WPPGY).

While Goodby will lead on creative initiatives worldwide, Ogilvy will remain in the mix, Integrated Marketing and Brand Management SVP Penny Baldwin told BoomTown in an interview this afternoon, focusing on international marketing efforts, including all upcoming brand launches in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

And, via it Neo and Mindshare units, Yahoo said, Ogilvy will also run all media buying for the Internet giant globally.

Yahoo (YHOO) is also keeping strategic branding firm Landor & Associates.

Goodby, Ogilvy and Landor will apparently form a Brand Advisory Board at Yahoo, run by Baldwin.

Baldwin stressed that the move was a broadening of its outside marketing advisers and was not a replacement of Ogilvy, or any indication that the current new marketing campaign needed to change.

She said internal reports on the effectiveness of the overall big theme, “It’s Y!ou,” launched last month, have been strong.

Nonetheless, Baldwin added that the new agency is sure to bring more ideas to the mix in the massive effort, which has included television, print, outdoor and online ads.

And, she noted, the location of Goodby’s HQ in San Francisco, not far from Yahoo’s Sunnyvale digs, was also a plus.

“Goodby has the caliber to serve worldwide needs,” said Baldwin. “And with the way the Web moves so fast, we thought it was also important to have deep resources locally.”

Up next, she added: to “root our brand strategy with more hard-hitting” messages about Yahoo.

“This is far more than just an advertising effort,” said Baldwin of Yahoo’s efforts to revitalize itself in the eyes of consumers–and, while she did not say so, to the digerati of Silicon Valley. “This is a business transformation.”

Here is Baldwin’s boss, Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele talking about the company’s marketing efforts of late in a video interview with Nicki Dugan on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog in a new feature called Yodelcast (sorry, Nicki, but it is simply too professional and unjiggly for BoomTown’s seal of approval):

And here are two examples of Goodby’s creatives–Comcast’s Slowskys and Robert Goulet for Emerald Nuts:

For the last month or so, the Google homepage has played with the famous colored-letter logo by morphing it into a sci-fi in-joke and later adding another “l” to indicate the company’s 11th birthday.

The former–which included logos with alien spaceships and crop circles–was to honor writer H.G. Wells, author of “War of the Worlds” and other science fiction.

Now, a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi–the Indian leader whose 140th birthday anniversary is today–has become the “G” in the logo. (If you click on the image, it links to a search for his last name.)

While the impulse to do so seems hard to resist, I am not quite sure I much like Google (GOOG)–even with good intentions to educate and honor–using the image of one of the world’s great political leaders and peace advocates as a letter on a search service homepage, even if it will be seen worldwide.

(The poor Gosselin kids as a “G”? Oprah as an “O”? Liza Minelli as an “L”? I am totally down with that!)

Then again, I might be a tad grumpy on this issue since I also didn’t like Gandhi’s photo being used in that “Think Different” Apple (AAPL) marketing campaign more than a decade ago, which made him seem like some sort of advertising pitchman.

In any case, here’s the real thing to truly appreciate his impact on this world–Gandhi’s actual voice in his famous “One World” speech in 1931:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Yahoo is set to unveil a major marketing campaign to reset advertiser and consumer perception of the long-troubled company during Advertising Week in New York, which starts a week from tomorrow.

According to numerous sources BoomTown has spoken to about the campaign, Yahoo (YHOO) is–at least with advertisers–going to focus on stressing the size and scale of the Internet giant.

The details of the plan will be made public Tuesday, Sept. 22, at a press conference.

It will take place immediately after a keynote speech–titled “Yahoo’s Consumer Revolution…Round II”–that the company’s new CMO, Elisa Steele, is set to deliver on the second day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference.

MIXX is a two-day event, run by IAB, focused specifically on online advertising.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is also going to be attending Advertising Week–during which all the major players in the advertising business gather in Manhattan for a series of events–for a plethora of meetings with big Yahoo clients.

It is likely she and several other senior Yahoo execs will be at the press conference, sources said.

That press event will also include Penny Baldwin, a well-known industry exec Yahoo hired as its SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management in July.

The main message Bartz is set to deliver is that Yahoo is a powerhouse unlike any others on the Web when it comes to online display advertising.

And, in fact, Yahoo–despite all the internal and external turmoil it has undergone in recent years–remains one of the largest sites on the Internet, and is the top player in what is also called graphical advertising, as well as online media and communications.

“The whole push seems to be to remind people of vibrancy of the brand and exactly how huge its reach is,” said one person who has seen parts of the presentation. “It is less Yahoo is back than Yahoo has never left.”

Sources also noted that Yahoo is likely to stick to its plan to push the idea of “your home on the Web” to consumers, which I had previously posted about earlier this summer.

The idea of the Silicon Valley icon being the key hub destination for Internet users does dovetail with pushing its size to advertisers–major marketing messages that will also likely cost a pretty penny.

They will have to–Microsoft (MSFT) has been in the midst of a $100 million campaign for its new Bing search site and will likely spend more when it unveils updates to the service, dubbed Bing 2.0–within the next few weeks.

The company showed the changes it showed to its own employees last week, which was the subject of much tweeting on Twitter.

Yahoo will apparently give more specifics as to the spend for the marketing push at the press conference.

But, many sources said, the company is already out in the advertising market now, buying tens of millions of dollars in advertising online and offline to hawk Yahoo in print, on television and elsewhere.

(Full disclosure: Sources said that campaign will include The Wall Street Journal network, which includes this site.)

“It’s dramatic,” said one source about the marketing outlay.

Since she got to Yahoo, Bartz has continually stressed the need to promote Yahoo products and services more, including in an interview last week on CNBC (you can see that longish video here).

And, in the July earnings call for Yahoo, Bartz said: “In addition, we’re hard at work on plans to reposition our most valuable asset: Yahoo’s brand. Our Q3 plans include an initial wave of incremental marketing spend which will increase substantially into Q4 and next year.”

Also, in a Q&A in the same call, she added more about the long-term nature of the spending on branding:

“The branding and our whole campaign of advertising is just starting; however you have to understand that this is an ongoing campaign so it’s not transient at least for the next year or so. We’re really going to move to reposition the Yahoo brand and Yahoo Company, so right now, consider that as cost that’s in the system.”

What Bartz and other Yahoo execs will likely stress less is search, due to the search deal Yahoo struck in July with Microsoft in which the software giant will take over the back-end technology and Yahoo will sell search ads for both companies.

The company will compete with both Microsoft and Google (GOOG) in garnering the search market still, once the partnership is approved by regulators, with Yahoo focusing on differentiating itself via innovative user interface, design, features and functionality.

Here’s a video of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman talking to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show this morning about her nascent campaign to be governor of California as the Republican candidate.

Whitman, who was a favorite of failed Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, seems to have perfected the art of saying exactly nothing, even after Lauer asked her if she was nuts to run the “arguably ungovernable”–referencing a writer for the Sacramento Bee–California.

“Running a business is different from running a state,” said Lauer.

Whitman’s answer: Prioritization!

Another former eBay (EBAY) exec, who worked for Whitman, Steve Westly, is also being mentioned for the governor’s race to replace current Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the Democratic side.

I say we have an auction to determine which eBay exec gets the nod.

Until then, here’s the “Today” show video from the Meg2010Campaign site on YouTube:

At least, according to this excerpt from a 10-questions interview former Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox, who now contributes to Time magazine’s Swampland blog, did with Stop Smiling magazine recently.

Cox (pictured here) was on a blogger panel at our third D: All Things Digital conference in 2005, where she talked about the changes in the media industry due to the rise of blogs.

At the time, there was a lot of controversy about the rise of bloggers.

But now, in questions No. 7 and 8 here, Cox discusses the huge differences in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, in terms of blogs, and how the image of bloggers has shifted dramatically with mainstream media.

From Cox’s lips to traditional journalists’ ears.

Here are the excerpts:

Q7: You’ve been around long enough to see the differences between the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. Do you have any strong feelings about how this year differs from the Kerry-Bush election, in terms of the role that blogs play?

AMC: In 2004, MTV hired me to cover the Democratic convention, and I swear I did two or three interviews just on the fact that I was a blogger covering the convention. I doubt that would happen today. In 2004, people would be highly suspicious of me, because at any moment I could break out my computer and blog about them. I went to YearlyKos in 2006, as one of my first assignments for Time, and I was hanging out with the real reporters, and there was this running joke: As soon as someone said something off-color or impolitic, you’d say, “Hey, I’m gonna blog that.” Like a taunt. In 2008, I was at a Republican debate during the primaries, and I looked around the filing center and everyone was blogging. Everyone has that force propelling them to publish whatever they can. Anything that happens to them is now fodder for a Washington Post blog.

Q8: Do you think more traditional reporters still frown on blogging as if it were not a serious form of journalism?

AMC: The whole “are bloggers journalists?” question, which was always stupid, is finally fading, especially thanks to people like Josh Marshall [of Talking Points Memo], who have shown you don’t have to have a big organization behind you to be a journalist. The defining characteristic of a journalist is what you produce. I think it’s changed the question from “are bloggers journalists?” to “what is journalism?” And that is a perfectly acceptable debate to have. There’s never going to be an answer, but it starts us at a better place than simply talking about delivery systems.”

Ana

Here are videos of three of the new “I’m a PC” ads from Microsoft’s next phase of its Vista-doesn’t-bite advertising campaign.

You can decide if you like them or not. But BoomTown is declaring them a vast improvement on the quirky initial commercials that featured Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

Microsoft has insisted that those three ads, which attracted a chorus of critics, were just a “teaser” to this second phase of a $300 million ad campaign, in which the software giant seems to be returning from its short visit in hipville to a more normal marketing message.

And these new Microsoft (MSFT) ads are definitely normal and more clear, having an it’s-a-small-world-after-all panoply of people declare that they are all PCs.

The message is aimed at attacking the more elitist message of Apple (AAPL) ads, which have effectively mocked PC guy relentlessly over the years as an oaf.

In Microsoft’s ads, its own PC guy complains at the start of each that “I’ve been made into a stereotype.”

The ads proceed to show regular folk with some celebrities mixed in (including Gates, TV hottie Eva Longoria and feel-good author Deepak Chopra), all proudly declaring their PC affiliation.

While the ads feel like they are tapping a little too much into that uneasy red-state-blue-state vibe–as if we need more of that–they’re also nicely done, thankfully, although not particularly new or innovative.

Which, after the Gates/Seinfeld oddity, is a good thing.

Here are three of the new ads (click them all at once for an even better experience!):

While the very quirky ads recently rolled out by Microsoft to tout itself–starring Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld–got a ton of hype, it turns out there will be no more than than the three already released for now.

It seems the churros have gone cold.

According to a Microsoft (MSFT) spokesman, the Seinfeld advertisements were apparently just a warmup for more to come tomorrow, though the new ones will not use Seinfeld in any significant way.

But they might still feature Gates and Seinfeld could return.

But the main Seinfeld/Gates pairing was, said Microsoft, just a “teaser” for the next phase of the $300 million campaign to tout its beleaguered Windows Vista operating system.

[UPDATE] Said Microsoft in an official statement: “We will be executing the second phase of our advertising campaign tomorrow, as planned from the start.”

The company said upcoming personalities in the new ads will include feel-good author Deepak Chopra, television star Eva Longoria and musician Pharrell Williams, and they will also use Microsoft’s own version of the dumpy PC guy character to attack Apple’s hugely successful Mac/PC ads.

BoomTown is dubious, to say the least, that Microsoft can be more clever than Apple (AAPL) in the marketing arena. And by dubious, I mean its chances are as good as Lehman Bros. rising from its financial grave.

News of the development was first reported by Valleywag, which said in its post title that the ads were canceled, which is untrue.

But Microsoft’s rep stresses that this was the plan all along, to jump-start the marketing conversation, even though the ads have, in fact, not gotten a lot of praise.

You be the judge. Here are the three ads. The first with the churros joke and the second and third visit with a family, combined: