LiveSide - News blog : Advertising

MSN, Twitter, etc. get to tag along with new Windows Phone

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:57:00 GMT

You just can’t make this stuff up. It’s like Microsoft is living in some parallel advertising universe where the object is to generate as much jaw dropping disbelief to their ads as possible. If the Windows 7 launch party videos weren’t enough, here’s the new Microsoft/AT&T ad for Windows Phone:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Windows Phone ad “Icons” (YouTube)

According to YouTube poster “SocialNerdia”, the new ad is a product of Crispin Porter & Bogusky (CP&B), the agency behind the Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld ads for Windows. Parallel universe indeed.

(via the Technically Incorrect blog on CNET News)

Laptop Hunters, Behind The Scenes

Sunshine — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:36:00 GMT

Another “Laptop hunters” video appeared. No, not another one looking for a laptop, this time it’s a behind the scenes one.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Enjoy!

Via: The Microsoft Blog

New Laptop Hunters Ad – Meet Matt And Olivia

Sunshine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:31:00 GMT

A new laptop hunter add appeared. This time with Matt and Olivia who are looking for a laptop with a large screen, long battery life and the ability to share pictures for under $700.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

That rules out a Mac, the Mac is too small in this case. “What about the whole picture deal? Well,that’s Windows Live Photo Gallery” and they walk out with a HP dv7.

Japanese Rookies

Sunshine — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:18:33 GMT

Remember the Rookies? After the US and the UK, Japan has now entered the Rookies campaign.

The children in these series are the children of actual Microsoft Japan employees!

Enjoy!

Via Rob Margel

More TV Commercials from Bing, set to air tonite

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:16:00 GMT

Now Bing has its own YouTube Channel, complete with 2 new ads. These are variations on a “search overload” theme, much more focused than the initial ad we posted last night. Here are the two ads up so far (the third, original one is on the YouTube channel as well, along with a couple of promotional videos):

(Please visit the site to view this media)

(url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMt6saTqq4)

and

(Please visit the site to view this media)

(url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkaTcjDIMk)

New Laptop Hunters ad (I think we get the point)

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 15 May 2009 04:28:00 GMT

Another Laptop Hunters ad is out (this time they buy a Dell), and the ad sticks true to form – Go to Best Buy, thumb your nose at the Mac, walk away happy. These ads were good right out of the gate, but, truthfully, aren’t they beginning to wear a little thin?

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Now that Apple has started to hit back…

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…we’re going to have to start seeing a little more out of our Laptop Hunter friends. Let the commercial wars begin!

(as usual, thanks to Imran at Ithinkdifferent for spotting the ad)

Sheila the Laptop Hunter: Only 2gb ram for $2k? - meh

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:09:00 GMT

Our friend Imran Hussain has spotted the latest Laptop Hunter ad, this time featuring Sheila the videographer:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Sheila ends up with an HP HDX 16t, after passing on a $2000 Mac with a classic shrug.

Microsoft pubCenter beta goes public

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:54:00 GMT

Microsoft pubCenter, an ad publishing tool (think Google Adsense) from Microsoft Advertising, after existing as a private beta for a number of months, goes into public beta today, April 22.

Kevin McCabe, Senior Product Manager for pubCenter beta, will be at AdSpace, (a part of the AdTech conference in San Francisco) today to announce the public beta and to speak on the state of contextual advertising.

pubCenter is actively seeking publishers to join and test contextual ads on their sites, and you can sign up for the beta at http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher. You can get more information about the program on the pubCenter blog, also coming out of private beta today.

We’ve been using pubCenter for some time on LiveSide on a trial basis, and will continue to test it in the months to come:

While we can’t comment on reporting and performance, we are quite happy with pubCenter, and encourage you to give it a try on your sites.

UPDATE: Sorry forgot to mention that yes, the beta is still US only: "Note This is a U.S. only program at this time. You must provide a U.S. tax ID and address. "

Ad Agencies vie for “Pink” campaign: Zune enabled phones coming soon?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:30:26 GMT

Hot on the heels of Twitter as a source of breaking news, we’re getting a lot of good stuff lately from ad agency watchers like Ad Age and Ad Week. The latest comes from an Ad Week article reporting on a bidding war for a new Microsoft “mobile application”, “with the code name ‘Pink’”. According to the report, bidding is expected to be completed in May, and pits long time lead Microsoft ad agency McCann Erickson against Crispin Porter + Bogusky, creators of the “I’m a PC” campaign, and JWT, who just won a big contract for the upcoming rebrand of Live Search.

If Mary Jo Foley is right, Roz Ho’s Project Pink has something to do with a Zune-enabled mobile device; not a Microsoft built Zune Phone, per se:

(A year ago I speculated that Microsoft officials were carefully choosing their words about the existence of Zune phones. Looks like I was right. There will be Zune phones. There will be other kinds of Zune-enabled mobile devices. But they won’t be crafted — beyond the reference chassis — by Microsoft.)

We’ve already had confirmation of a new Zune device this year, and hints that it may be a Tegra-fied Zune HD, but Zune is about to become much more than just an mp3 player. Zune as a platform, coming from the Mother of all platform companies, Microsoft, should be fun to watch.

Microsoft lands Deadliest Catch, beats YouTube and Yahoo to 7 figure deal

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:22:47 GMT

In its first ad campaign to simultaneously combine Internet, mobile, and video game ads, Microsoft beat out Google’s YouTube and Yahoo! for an ad deal with Discovery Communications, Inc. to promote the upcoming 5th season of “The Deadliest Catch”, according to a report on Bloomberg.com.

To promote Discovery Channel’s fifth season of the crab fishing documentary “Deadliest Catch,” Microsoft came up with a package of ideas it has never tried before. Ads will take over the MSN.com and MSN mobile homepages and 90 percent of ad space on MSNBC and Fox Sports sites. Microsoft will run sweepstakes in video-games like ‘Shaun White Snowboarding’ and send text- message reminders to phones to watch or record the show.

“Microsoft just came in like rock stars on this,” Donna Murphy, the Discovery Channel’s vice president of marketing strategy, said in an interview. “They were the first ones to really blow it out in every direction.”

…

To promote the premiere of “Deadliest Catch” tomorrow night, Discovery will take over MSN.com, MSNBC and Fox Sports, the first time those sites have devoted so much space to a single advertiser. A mobile-phone contest will give away points that can be used to purchase video-games and movies from Microsoft’s Xbox online service.

The Bloomberg report calls the deal a victory for Microsoft in a slow display ad market, one that is expected to grow only 1.5%, compared with 37% growth in 2007.

The report goes on to describe changes to Microsoft’s ad business that helped to land the campaign, and to point out problems with Microsoft’s programs to track ad viewers:

Microsoft may be having a hard time partially because competitors offer software with more advanced features for tracking ad viewers closely and measuring the effectiveness of ads, Microsoft and clients say. It’s been too hard to mount a campaign across different Microsoft sites, phones and video- games. Clients who do manage it can receive four different bills, (Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott) Howe said.

Microsoft has been reportedly talking again to Yahoo! about an ad deal, and according to Kara Swisher at All Things D, that deal might include a swap that would see the display advertising business go to Yahoo!, with Microsoft acquiring Search:

Thus, sources said, the talks include many scenarios, such as one in which the companies swap online advertising assets and deliver services to each other.

In that interesting plan, Yahoo might take over all of Microsoft’s display and premium advertising business to sell along with its own, while Microsoft would run the search advertising business for the pair.

Such a deal, which plays to each company’s strengths, would bind the two closely together, even though they still compete on many other fronts in the Internet space.

What will this latest deal means to Microsoft’s willingness to part with the display ad business? We can only stay tuned for the next exciting episode…

"I'm a PC because I'm really picky"

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:27:00 GMT

Another commercial, another sly slam at Apple. In the latest "I'm a PC" commercial, Giampaolo goes on his own hunt for a laptop. We'll leave it for Todd Bishop to dig up the dirt on this guy, for now, just enjoy:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Microsoft readies $80-$100 Million ad campaign for new search brand

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:46:53 GMT

via Todd Bishop at TechFlash

Microsoft has selected ad agency JWT to run the campaign, according to a news posting in Advertising Age:

Industry executives expect JWT, part of WPP, to unveil an estimated $80 million to $100 million push for the new search engine in June, with online, TV, print and radio executions. Microsoft spent $361 million on U.S. measured media in 2008, the bulk of it devoted to brand advertising and smaller chunks to other Microsoft brands such as Xbox and MSN, according to TNS Media Intelligence data.

According to the post, whether the new brand for Live Search is Kumo, or some other name, it will be positioned as a “reimagined” search engine:

According to one person close the situation, the forthcoming campaign will be careful to not position "Kumo" as a competitor to Yahoo or Google and instead cast it as a reimagined search engine that ups the game by yielding fewer but more-focused results. The proposed strategy is probably a good -- if not the only -- way to go.

However Ad Age doesn’t seem overly impressed that the campaign will make much of a difference:

Heavy marketing hasn't exactly been a winning formula for other search engines. IAC-owned Ask.com, for example, asked Crispin for a major ad campaign that launched in May 2007 and focused on Ask.com's algorithm. But Ask.com's share declined two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.5% from July 2007 to July 2008, according to ComScore.

Dr. Qi Lu, who spoke today to a group of Microsoft worldwide field leaders is planning his first public appearance in June at SMX Advanced, which fits nicely into the timing of the ad campaign.

Advertising festival names Steve Ballmer “Media Person of the Year”

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:53:00 GMT

The 56th annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival has named Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, as Media Person of the Year. The annual award will be presented to Ballmer, who will speak at the event in a Microsoft Advertising seminar, at the Festival in Cannes, France this June.

In accepting the award, Ballmer said:

"I'm honoured to accept this prestigious award on behalf of all the people at Microsoft who are working to redefine media and advertising in the digital era. This is a time of sweeping innovation and transformation in advertising and publishing, and there are incredible opportunities to use technology to deliver more value to both advertisers and consumers. We look forward to working closely with our media and advertising partners to continue to push the boundaries of what is possible”.

Microsoft has been causing quite a stir in the advertising world recently, not only with its continuing focus on competing with Google and changing the nature of internet advertising, but also with a series of ads created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Alex Bogusky is one of the speakers at Cannes Lions, coincidently). The most recent ad features laptop shopper Lauren, who’s just not cool enough for a Mac:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The advertising world seems to be pulling for Microsoft to get better at search, to compete with Google, and to improve their image. Will a few ads and awards, or a name change for search be enough to begin to turn the tables?

Windows Live Mythbusters Part II

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:26:00 GMT

A few weeks ago our friend Dena over at Neowin caught a Windows Live live commercial on Mythbusters, and tonight, LiveSide reader Orion was able to capture a new one:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Thanks to Orion for taking the time to and having the presence of mind to capture the moment, convert the video, upload it to Soapbox, and share it with us. We really appreciate it!

Windows Live on Mythbusters

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:34:00 GMT

Windows Live Photo Gallery has been featured in a number of commercials recently, and tonight in a variation on a theme, Photo Gallery made an appearance on the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters. LiveSide reader Orion commented on it, and as luck would have it our friend Dena over at Neowin was able to capture the commercial and post it up on Soapbox (thanks, Dena!!!):

(Please visit the site to view this media)

While we’re liking the “Rookies” series, getting Windows Live on a fun series like Mythbusters seems like a great idea, and we’re hoping there’s more to come from the ad campaign.

By the way, although we haven’t seen it air yet, there is another :30 second ad in the Rookies series, this one with 8 year old Adam:

(Please visit the site to view this media)