LiveSide - News blog : Advance08

Microsoft Advertising: “last click shouldn't get all the credit”

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:59:27 GMT

Last year at Advance08 Microsoft announced both a new name for their advertising strategy - “Microsoft Advertising”, and the concept of “engagement mapping”. The thought is that a consumer may look at numerous ads, websites, and brand impressions well before making the “last click” to make a purchase, so why should that last click get all the credit? Of course Google has built an empire on precisely the notion that the last click is the only valuable one, so it makes sense for Microsoft to attack it.

Today Microsoft reiterated its attack on last click thinking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Annual Meeting. At the meeting, according to Twitter accounts of the proceedings, Howe likened last click to the NFL: “if the NFL only paid the top sco(r)ers, teams start losing because there's no defense or offensive line.”

Howe was “engaging, informative and entertaining” as he announced MS PubCenter (which has been in beta under the name adCenter Publisher) the Publisher’s Leadership Council and the Microsoft Media Network, although some in attendance weren’t entirely sold: “can MSFT be trusted as a leader in "Transparency and Trust"?"

The Publisher’s Leadership Council, according to a press release issued today by Microsoft,

“comprises digital media executives and discipline-leading practitioners, including charter members from IAC, Dow Jones Online, The New York Times Co., Time Inc. and Viacom Inc. This group will provide firsthand perspectives and insights to inform PubCenter features and functionality, including enhanced targeting, measurement and reporting functionality. Partner company executives will form a steering committee, focused on framing the key challenges and opportunities facing the digital media industry”

Microsoft is counting on changing the game in online advertising, and Howe said "Our competition isn't with each other. It's with offline, and waste”, but others weren’t so sure, saying: “this is not good for publishers. microsoft is not unbiased. more concerning than google doubleclick acquisition”.

Microsoft today also released some documents related to engagement mapping, purporting to show that “94% of online advertising interactions are actually occurring prior to a conversion or a sale and concludes that while web publishers are doing their job in engaging with consumers before they purchase, they don’t get the credit they deserve in reaching them”.

As Microsoft moves (or is pushed) into a more services and advertising oriented model, getting advertisers excited about changing the game away from last click thinking is emerging as a core strategy. Will it work, especially as the advertising world is shaken by the economy? Howe seems to think that “adversity must fuel innovation”. We’ll have wait and see if he’s right.

Microsoft to roll-out Live Search Cashback to UK, then EMEA

Chris — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:07:00 GMT

At the Cannes International Advertising Festival today, Microsoft has announced it plans to extend the new Live Search Cashback program to the UK.

Launched at the Advance08 advertising summit held in Redmond, Live Search Cashback has been in testing during the past month in only the US market. The service forms part of Microsoft’s new efforts to make progress in the Search market, along with Engagement Mapping, which was also demoed in front of Microsoft’s advertising partners at Advance08.

To recap, Live Search Cashback offers users the chance to search for products they wish to buy, and then offers cashback savings on the purchase. For example on a Microsoft Zune 80GB, a discount of between 2-5% is offered from the various participating stores; Oakley sunglasses have a 9-12% discount. On purchases of $100+ these savings really do add up, so somehow Microsoft has to market this tool well in order to drive growth. Definitely not a trivial task.

Announcing the expansion of the cashback program out to other markets so soon after its initial launch is a good sign. It suggests that user retention or “stickiness” is high, and that both partners and Microsoft are happy with how things have progressed – driving sales and monetising search traffic. With Live Search Club now taking 2.6% of all US search queries, if Cashback can make a similar impact then that will be no small achievement. Whether this is something that “disrupts search” remains to be seen.

I couldn’t get much out of Microsoft about this, but Brad Goldberg, GM of the Live Search Business Unit gave a statement:

“As discussed this week, we have plans to scale our search efforts in EMEA. Cashback is a core part of our strategy and we’ll look at that as part of our overall plans.”

Farecast, Product search, mobile demos from Satya Nadella at Advance08

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:27:00 GMT

I’ve been getting a little more familiar with the little video camera I picked up a few weeks ago. Today at the Advance08 advertisers summit at Microsoft in Redmond, as part of the keynote with Bill Gates and Satya Nadella, Satya showed off Farecast, a recent acquistion that is now integrated into Live Search, and I pointed the little Sanyo toward the stage:

Farecast DEMO by Satya Nadella at Advance08 - MSN Video

(about 8:44)

Is Microsoft starting to get its branding act together?

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:11:49 GMT

Today, at Advance08, Microsoft unveiled a new brand name, Microsoft Advertising, and a new logo, which amazingly enough seems to fit into an overall scheme of recent logos. Take a look at these:

(there are more, thanks to VasiS for noticing in the comments)

This month’s Fast Company magazine has a cover story on Alex Bogusky and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the ad agency recently hired to run the $300 million dollar ad campaign Microsoft is planning for this summer. While none of these logos and designs are from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the new campaign may shed further light on how Microsoft is preparing to present itself to the world. Clearly someone is paying attention to the ridicule that Microsoft has brought upon itself by not paying attention to consumer focused issues like branding and logos, and how much effect those issues are starting to have on even Microsoft’s core businesses. Would Vista be doing better in the enterprise if it wasn’t being assaulted by the consumer press and by rivals like Apple? Perhaps not, but there are clear indications to the contrary.

While some of the advertising and marketing gurus here at Advance08 might have something to say about a brand strategy that’s still not quite there, for Microsoft these recent logos seem to have made a quantum leap forward in bringing a consistent theme (and a set of simple product names) together. Kevin Johnson mentioned Microsoft’s struggles with branding in his memo to his team, issued last Sunday:

4. Fix our online branding - Our brands are fragmented and confusing today, and we recognize a need to clarify and align our online branding. We are now driving forward to address this opportunity.

Microsoft has long been ridiculed for painfully long product names, and had to retreat from a less than well thought out Windows Live branding strategy, if indeed there was any strategy at all in the beginning. Miraculously, that seems to be changing. When I pointed out the problems in Live Search headers and logos in a post last week, it was in part because we’ve been told about new branding strategies before, first with Windows Live itself, and then with “the flair”, as Harrison likes to call it. Then we had a couple of iterations of new design, and while everyone seemed to have new ideas, no one bothered to clean up the old ones. Hopefully, with a nudge or two from Kevin Johnson, that will begin to change.

Advance08 Advertising coming to Windows Live for Mobile, Live Search for Mobile

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:11:36 GMT

I’m sitting here at Advance08, at Microsoft in Redmond, where Senior Vice President for Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Brian McAndrews made a couple of announcements today. In addition to announcing the rebranding of Microsoft’s various advertising services to “Microsoft Advertising”, McAndrews announced the availability for marketers to be able to place banner advertising on Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail for Mobile properties. Available in France, Spain, the US, and the UK, ads on Hotmail and Messenger in the US for example, would reach some 25 million mobile users of Hotmail and Messenger. Plans are also being readied for keyword ad placement in Live Search for Mobile.

Tomorrow we’ll be listening to Satya Nadella and Bill Gates talk about Live Search, and we’re expecting some significant announcements.