Microsoft Could Stumble in Quest for Ad Speed
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Microsoft wants to give its online advertising and online services business a major boost, ending years of business and technology defeats at the hands of Google.
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If you haven't updated your Windows computer in more than one year, you could be subjected to a barrage of unwanted adware.
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SAN JOSE, Calif.  -- Seeking to be more competitive with Microsoft Corp...
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Operating system might help make up for a rough quarter and Microsoft nipping at the company's heels.
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Microsoft Corp. isn&#39;t often an underdog in anything, so when the software powerhouse released its new search engine, I was anxious to give it a whirl.
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Microsoft Corp.'s online advertising researchers will spend this year teaching computers to be smart about sticking ads into video clips, and to be even smarter about targeting ads to specific Web surfers.
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Microsoft Corp.  may need  to cut prices or pursue a deal similar to Yahoo Inc.&#039;s   and online auctioneer eBay Inc.&#039;s  partnership to gain  ground in the lucrative Internet advertising market, analysts  said on Thursday.
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Redmond hopes the hefty deal will make it a player in the advertising marketplace.
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Microsoft Office, software for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations, is seeing its growth slow. Microsoft isn't pleased.
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Microsoft needs to do something online--quick. But buying Yahoo! isn't enough.
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NEW YORK It&#39;ll come as no surprise to even the most casual industry observer that many marketers are shifting more of their ad dollars online. And perhaps even less surprising is that there are significant obstacles preventing an even greater flow of dollars to the Web.
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Is Microsoft's offer too low, too high, or just right?
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This recent study finds that IT executives are challenged by timeliness, relevancy and sheer access to data when trying to measure the value of application development investments. Only 4% have visibility into application maintenance spending. Are you accounting for 100% of your AD value? Review this report by IDG Research & MKS today.
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When it arrives, the much-delayed Windows update will have double XP's rate of adoption, Redmond says. Not everyone's so sure.
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Google undeservedly has gotten all the credit for many clicks on the&#160;online ads&#160;it delivers via its search engine, but Microsoft wants to put a stop to that.So said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of Microsoft&#39;s Advertiser Publisher Solutions Group during a panel discussion at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco Thursday.Currently, systems for tracking ad conversions and analyzing online marketing campaigns focus on the last ad a user viewed or clicked on, he said. This gives all credit to that last publisher and not to others the user may have been at before and influenced the user to seek more information about the advertiser, McAndrews said.In particular, this situation has unfairly benefitted Google because many times someone will see a display ad on a site and go to Google, search for the vendor&#39;s name, and then click on the vendor&#39;s text ad served by Google, he said.But Microsoft is developing a technology called &quot;conversion attribution&quot; that will track the trail of ads seen by a user, so that advertisers get a more complete understanding of how effective their marketing campaigns are, he said.Along the way, advertisers will get a more balanced view of the value of their ads across a wider trail of Web sites and via a variety of ad formats, not just the last ad displayed by the last publisher, which is often Google, he said.&quot;We&#39;ll introduce conversion attribution to give [more publishers] credit and it will devalue search [advertising],&quot; McAndrews said.Search advertising is the largest online ad format, accounting for about 40 percent of total ad spend. Google has built its empire on these pay-per-click ads, which the company matches to the content of queries on its search engine and to the content of third-party Web sites on its ad network.While search has been the main driver of the blistering growth of online advertising in the past five years, that won&#39;t be the case in the coming five years, McAndrews said.In addition to the &quot;conversion attribution&quot; technology, the shift away from search ads will be fueled by the increased spending in online ads from large companies which prefer display and rich media advertising designed to boost their brands, and for which pay-per-click text ads are less effective, he said.Google didn&#39;t have any representatives participating in the panel. The company didn&#39;t immediately respond to a request for comment.Microsoft didn&#39;t immediately respond to a request for clarification on the availability of the &quot;conversion attribution&quot; technology.McAndrews, who&#160;came to Microsoft recently via its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, of which he was the CEO, shared the stage with other ad executives in a panel titled &quot;Edge: The Advertising Model&quot; moderated by conference chair John Battelle.
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Microsoft Corp  has showed  early signs of narrowing the gap with Google Inc  in  its Web business, leading Wall Street to ask whether the  world&#39;s biggest software company may be able to turn an  overlooked unit into a financial powerhouse.
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XP-based tablets have gotten a lukewarm reception so far. But Microsoft hopes to tempt consumers with improved features.