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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

This is very interesting to know that adCenter team is getting feedback from the advertisers and thereby improving features to give you more control over over targeting, bidding and distribution of the several advertising campaigns.

The adCenter provides Feedback Form that allows the advertisers to fill up their feedback that will help adCenter team to improve advertising features.

Further, the adCenter offers Feedback & Feature Request Thread on its discussion forums, which enables the advertisers to share their opinions and see other's views as well.

All these steps have been taken to enhance and improve different advertising campaigns. As mentioned in the blog of Carolyn Miller, feedbacks and requests from advertisers will be seen by the appropriate teams at Microsoft and immediate action will be taken.

According to the adCenter team, people sharing their feedback and requests need to mention the reason as to why certain features are important for them, because it helps the team to evaluate good ideas.

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Microsoft has released a new MSN Toolbar which is powered by Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, reported the Bing team on Twitter. Check out the new Toolbar at toolbar.msn.com.

Here is a screen capture:

The Microsoft Advertising Blog reported that Microsoft advertisers are now offered with the option to purchase high quality, premium on-deck display inventory in the Verizon Wireless Ad Network on a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Action (CPA) basis.

Yes, Microsoft has recently rolled out a set of new frequency capping options for display media running on the Verizon Wireless Ad Network in order to help advertisers with greater control over their mobile advertising investments. With the new options Verizon Network advertisers will be able to maintain the strictest frequency goals across multiple on-deck browsing sessions, which will further help them maximize campaign reach without being too creative.

Along, Microsoft is all set to manage and optimize Verizon Performance campaigns on an on-going basis, while ensuring that advertisers will continue to get all the powerful demographic ad targeting options from the combination of Microsoft and Verizon Wireless Network. While doing this, Microsoft and Verizon will also take care of the consumer privacy. They are not likely to collect or store any personally identifiable user information with these new mobile products.

In the meanwhile, Microsoft also brings online-grade accountability standards to its Verizon Wireless Ad Network display inventory. Now, advertisers can independently verify the impression delivery and click performance of their campaigns running on the Verizon Wireless Ad Network, as well as they can use third party system tools like Atlas DMT and DoubleClick DART for online campaign monitoring.

In an attempt to encourage searchers to use Bing more, Microsoft has come up with a great idea recently. Microsoft announced a “Bing stimulus package”, which is a Cashback program as per which searchers will get cashback rewards as high as 50 percent upon purchasing products from select merchants. The cashback offer starts 10 August for a limited time.

Earlier, Microsoft had offered cashback up to 35 percent, but this time searchers are offered with almost double cashback as compared to before. To get the rewards, searchers out there need to search for what they are looking for at Bing. After entering your search, look for the Cashback rewards icon on the search ads. Then follow the steps as shown there in order to get up to 50 percent back.

Here is a screenshot of a search for “GPS Receiver”:

Yahoo's search and infrastructure expert Doug Cutting is leaving the company to join Cloudera. He will be leaving Yahoo! at the end of August, 2009. Cutting created the Hadoop technology for Yahoo's search index.

Although, people are assuming that the recent Yahoo-Microsoft deal, in which Microsoft would take over Yahoo's search engine can be the reason behind Cutting's move, he told the New York Times that is not the case.

“This has been in the works for awhile and is unrelated,” Doug Cutting said. “I am definitely not leaving in any sort of protest, and the thing I like least about this move is that it might be perceived that way.”

Well, Cutting will be doing the same sort of work at Cloudera that he has been doing at Yahoo. In his personal blog, Cutting informed that he will continue working with Yahoo! developers.

Microsoft Advertising, along with other ad agencies is taking part in a contest named, “The Big Ad Gig” . The contest will feature eight contestants competing for a job at a top ad agency. The New York Times Building will host the contest at 10:00 AM on Thursday, September 24, in conjunction with Advertising Week 09.

'The Big Ad Gig' will have a panel of Creative Directors, CEO's and marketing leaders from leading ad agencies like Atmosphere Proximity, Ogilvy, Crispin, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, The Ad Council and Microsoft Advertising. The panel will judge the eight contestants who will be vying for the chance to work a 30-day paid freelance gig at one of above top ad agencies. New York Times advertising columnist, Stuart Elliot will be the moderator at the event.

Also, one winning campaign will be produced and run across Microsoft Advertising's media properties, including gaming, online and mobile.

“Our core mission at Microsoft Advertising is to build the platforms, content and technologies that breathe life into the big dreams and creative vision of today's top advertising minds,” said Charles Johnson, General Manager of Mobile Media for Microsoft Advertising.“We are excited to help foster a new generation of advertising talent, and look forward to bringing the winning concept to life.”

After a July update less than two weeks ago, Bing seems to be updating again. Many webmasters are noticing a search results update on Microsoft'search engine. Some webmasters are reporting their experiences in a WebmasterWorld thread as follows:

“Definitely seeing a shift across the board. Biggest change I can pinpoint is a continued decrease in relevancy of KIDs (keywords in domain). More than 80% of the top 500 KWs I track showed movement (mostly positive for me and mostly displacing a lot of KIDs results).”

“Yes, looks like an update – and Bing traffic converts well with certain demographics. Now I've gotta scramble to do some long over-due site updates because some pages popped up out of nowhere.”

Now, you know why it's happening if you are seeing an increase or decline in your referrers from Bing recently!

Forum discussion going on at WebmasterWorld.

Google is launching a rare commercial campaign in an attempt to boost the sales of its online business applications. The company is leasing billboards along major highways in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston in order to promote a set of business applications that sells for $50 per worker annually. The idea is to display a different message each weekday through August, starting with Monday morning’s commute.

Well, Google has been selling its applications package since 2007, however, it is now when the search giant realized the need of a more aggressive sales pitch. “People don’t necessarily think of Google when it comes to how we can help companies,” said Michael Lock, director of sales and operations for Google’s enterprise division in North America.

While Google is looking up to the newly launched ad campaign, it is keeping itself away from advertising its business applications in other offline media, such as magazines, newspapers, television or radio. With the billboard campaign Google aims at attracting corporate customers away from Microsoft Corp.’s e-mail service and industry-leading applications for word processing, spreadsheets and scheduling. Besides, it is also targeting IBM Corp. more or less.

Reportedly, with an attempt to challenge Google’s commanding lead in the online ad market, Microsoft had advanced a search partnership with Yahoo Inc. The latter has also upgraded its search engine June this year and renamed it Bing, which is being advertised in a $100 million marketing campaign. Contrary to this, Google has not bought advertising to promote its search engine ever since its inception nearly eleven years ago.

Google has always been confident about its word-of-mouth and free media exposure when it comes to establish its search engine as the Internet’s most powerful tool. For the first half of 2009, the advertising connected to the search engine is generating $10.7 billion in revenue. So, it can be said that the strategy proves beneficial for Google! Reportedly, software licensing, including Google’s sales of business applications and revenue from other non-advertising sales accounted for just $365 million in revenue during the same period.

After months of speculation, finally Yahoo and Microsoft search and online advertising deal is now official.

As per Yahoo’s Carol Bartz:

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry, and I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development. Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides. Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities and mobile experiences.”

And Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has this to say:

“Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company. Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”

The companies have also established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement.

From SEM and SEO point of view the key points to note are:

1. The deal will be complete by next year (2010) only.
2. Yahoo Publisher Network will probably be closed down. So we will only have adcenter and adwords to worry about.
3. Bing will become No.2 Search engine and by default Yahoo, Alltheweb, Altavista, Inktomi etc will be powered by Bing.
4. The deal will initially be for 10 years

More to come from the live conference which is happening right now. Read more at Yahoo! official blog: http://ycorpblog.com/2009/07/29/what-our-microsoft-deal-means-to-you

If you are a Bing fan as well as good at composing jingles, then participate in the “Bing Jingle Contest.” The Bing team is organsing this contest to see interesting music about Bing. The primary aim of this contest is to videotape yourself performing an original “jingle” that you’ve written, describing the attributes of the Microsoft search engine, Bing.

Here’s an introductory video.

The last date to submit your video entry is on 31 July, 2009, and winner will be announced on 5 August. The winner will be picked based on number of views and quality ratings they get on their video. They will be rewarded with a $500 American Express gift cheque.

To know more about the competition click here.