Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Strictly from a comparison perspective, I thought this article from BusinessWeek entitled, “Inside Microsoft’s war against Google” was very interesting being that it’s the first time I’ve ever seen this sort of overview published.  There are some very important paragraphes that distinguish Microsoft’s advertising efforts in this article:

Inside Microsoft’s war against Google
With Yahoo off the table, Microsoft to challenge Web juggernaut alone

…Microsoft has a fighting chance on several other fronts. Perhaps most important is display advertising, the colorful banner and video ads that run at the top or along the side of Web pages. Microsoft is among the leaders in the fragmented field, while Google is a bit player. Although the display market is smaller than search, it’s expected to grow faster over the next few years because of a surge in video ads. Market research firm IDC figures that by 2012 the display market will double, to $15.1 billion; revenue from search will reach $17.6 billion.

Microsoft makes money in the display business in two ways. It sells ads on its own popular Web sites, such as MSN and Hotmail, and it acts as a broker by placing ads on other companies’ Web sites and then splitting the revenue with them. Smaller Web sites use Microsoft because they don’t have a salesforce to call on advertisers and ad agencies. And even large players like media giant Viacom have found that letting Microsoft sell some of the space on sites like Comedy Central and MTV can lead to higher revenues. "They can achieve better monetization than we can on our own," says Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman…

…Microsoft is a fearsome competitor, with nearly unlimited financial and engineering resources. It has proven its determination to take down upstarts again and again over the years, from the Web browser market to the market for mobile-phone software. "We’re very persistent," said Ballmer at a wireless conference last year, "If we don’t get it right, we’ll keep coming and coming and coming."

Plenty of advertisers would like to see Microsoft succeed, if only to blunt Google. Although they appreciate the effectiveness of Google’s search ads, they’re nervous about one company dominating the online advertising market. "Competition from an advertiser’s perspective is a really good thing," says Rob Master, director of media for North America at consumer products giant Unilever Group…

…The most provocative pitch from Lorizio and his sales team will come late this summer. It goes like this: Search advertising is vastly overrated. Today, when a Web surfer is looking for a car, he might type "Chevrolet" into Google and then click on an ad alongside the search results. Google gets all the money for that click, even though other marketing efforts, both online and off, probably helped persuade that person to conduct the search. Ideally, an advertiser would know about all the ads that a potential customer sees before he makes a purchase. "They’re trying to say that Google’s getting too much credit, and there’s probably a lot of truth to that," says Curt Hecht, chief digital officer for the media buying giant Starcom MediaVest Group.

Microsoft has been developing a technology that will give advertisers a more complete picture. It’s called Engagement Mapping, and 16 advertisers and agencies have been testing it out since February. The technology anonymously tracks cookies, those digital footprints left on PCs by Web sites, to see if a consumer saw display or video ads within a month of making that ultimate click. Then it places values on each related online ad, weighting things like videos more heavily, since they’re likely to have more impact. That way publishers and marketers have a better understanding of the effectiveness of ad campaigns and can adjust pricing accordingly. "It’s not anti-search," says Brian McAndrews, the Microsoft senior vice-president overseeing the effort. "It’s just a better way to measure."

Ben Winkler is a believer. He’s director of interactive media at the Ingenuity Media Group, part of ad firm The Martin Agency. He’s been testing the Microsoft technology for one of his clients, wireless provider Alltel. The technology, he says, shows that display ads have an impact that had never been clear before. As a result, he plans to advise clients to spend a greater share of their ad dollars on display vs. search ads. "We’re taking credit away from search to a high degree," he says…

Read the entire article here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24543408/