Microsoft To Google: It's On!

[jmiller]

Microsoft is planning to release an assault on the search advertising industry this coming June, according to the Associated Press. Pulling from the Chinese research leg of the company, the Beast of Redmond aims to add highly targeted and contextual next-generation search marketing technology to its weapons cache to continue its bout against the new nemesis found in Google.

Being in the shadow of another company is certainly not something Microsoft is used to. Sure, Sony gave the software company a proper thumping with PlayStation 2, a hard lesson that propelled an aggressive dropping of Xbox 360 gamer bait in time for Christmas. “In time for the holidays” was a strong left hook to Sony’s chin before the tech giant could throw out the monstrously high-tech PlayStation3. Microsoft is hoping an early attack put a crack in Sony’s glass jaw.

Microsoft’s new plan of action smacks of a similar counterattack strategy. In the search marketing business, it’s been a losing battle for second place. Not realizing the early importance of search technology, Gates and company outsourced their afterthought to Yahoo!’s Overture Services. As their market share of the search market has gone from bad to worse, dropping by as much as eight percent in recent years, that strategy has proven ineffective.

Though some have speculated a stronger relationship with Yahoo! is forthcoming, the relationship is scheduled to come to genial close in June. It appears that’s when MSN will make its push for at least second place, if not able to over come a strong memetic force in Google.

The AP reported that 25 percent of sponsored links come from Microsoft’s recent testing of adCenter and that in June that percentage will grow to 100.

Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its adCenter Incubation Lab, shortened to adLab for the time constrained, a joint-effort between MSN’s adCenter and Microsoft Research that has given way to a state-of-the-art laboratory in Beijing. adLab has “a mission to research and incubate advanced technologies for MSN adCenter, designed to provide advertisers with rich targeting capabilities based on audience intelligence information and give consumers a more relevant online experience.”

That relevant online experience includes advertising across several platforms from blogs to search to video all aimed at targeting a precise audience. Microsoft demonstrated some of these technologies at their recent adCenter Demo Fest.

“ These prototypes hold the promise to change online advertising dramatically in areas such as paid search, behavioral targeting and contextual advertising. Also shown were projects addressing areas of incubation in their earliest stages of investigation, such as ad bar-code readers, social network mining, and video and large-display ads,” said Microsoft in a statement.

The adLab team in Beijing consists of letters-after-their-names scientists with specializations in data mining, information retrieval, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, auction theory, visual computing and digital media.

One of the more interesting highlights of the adLab was the discussion of video hyperlink ads that detect products shown on TV and allow an instant referral to information about the product.

So basically, as Mike Meyers is making fun of product placement in Wayne’s World, a Doritos hyperlink could appear in future syndicated showings, taking would-be customers to information pages as well as where Doritos can be bought.

“The exciting work being shown at adCenter Demo Fest and the new Microsoft adLab reflects Microsoft’s commitment to innovation in the field of ad products,” said Tarek Najm, general manager of adCenter at Microsoft.

“The Microsoft team of top researchers in this field is unsurpassed and certain to produce compelling advances that will impact and ultimately change the game in online advertising.”

And if they can make good on those promises, the game just might be changed.

[williamc]

Knowing microsofts hard-on for google, it would not surprise me if they did actually put enough effort into this to actually show us all something new and possibly better at giving us the ROI we demand.

It will be interesting to watch unfold at the very least.

[bceagle]

All I know, is it seems MSN has dropped my site at http://sheet-music.8k.com, and I think it is because I run Adsense Google ads. Google rarely uses my site for results, even though it has indexed all the pages. Most of my hits come from good 'ole Yahoo!

cheers
from dave email: dphilley@sheet-music.8k.com

[jane@superwebgroup.com]

Is anyone else sick of Microsoft just chasing down other firm's ideas? They were the last company on the browser bandwagon (it was almost as if the internet took them by surprise) now you can't go anywhere without using IE, and they've gone after iTunes, and have copied just about every functionality from MAC’s OS from drop and drag to the trash can – I mean really – don’t they have some original ideas of their own? And, it’s not as if they add to the free market ideals that Adam Smith preached they just crush the competition until they’re dust.

[SEOforGoogle]

Not that I am defending MS, but in business, if you can take someone else's idea and get it into the hands of more people, you're going to win...

[zaphodsplanet]

MS doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell against Google. MS has never had an original idea. I don't care how big they "Have Been".... all good things must come to an end ....:). MS doesn't have a clue what they are trying to do against Google.... and I seriously doubt they ever will.

[williamc]

They may not have had an original idea, however their budget is far larger, and M$ has always applied that budget in ways that work to get marketshare. I would not count them out just yet.

[mktplace]

Is anyone else sick of Microsoft just chasing down other firm's ideas? They were the last company on the browser bandwagon (it was almost as if the internet took them by surprise) now you can't go anywhere without using IE, and they've gone after iTunes, and have copied just about every functionality from MAC’s OS from drop and drag to the trash can – I mean really – don’t they have some original ideas of their own? And, it’s not as if they add to the free market ideals that Adam Smith preached they just crush the competition until they’re dust.

Just remember that Jobs ripped all that cool MAC GUI stuff off himself - from a company called Xerox.

[Papadoc]

I say, "Eh... heard it before and it will be heard again."

The long awaited release of the all new improved MSN Search was supposed to sink Google according to lots of folks including those at MS. Like other MS products, most people found it wanting, and the only way MS keeps what market share it does have is to make it the default search tool for its subscriber base. If not for these, MSN would lose some pretty deep market share. If Google goes national WIFI, it might just do that.

For all their budgets and all their huffing and puffing, MS still sits with Vista yet unreleased and nobody but nobody really cares. As I've heard it before, the big advantages to Vista are spyware protection, desktop search, and the ability to apply patches with fewer reboots.

[Papadoc]

I say, "Eh... heard it before and it will be heard again."

The long awaited release of the all new improved MSN Search was supposed to sink Google according to lots of folks including those at MS. Like other MS products, most people found it wanting, and the only way MS keeps what market share it does have is to make it the default search tool for its subscriber base. If not for these, MSN would lose some pretty deep market share. If Google goes national WIFI, it might just do that.

For all their budgets and all their huffing and puffing, MS still sits with Vista yet unreleased and nobody but nobody really cares. As I've heard it before, the big advantages to Vista are spyware protection, desktop search, and the ability to apply patches with fewer reboots. So why buy Vista when others including Google already have presented these tools?

I almost feel sorry for MS who just seems to be chasing Google down the Yellow Brick Road, broom in hand, saying, "I will get you my pretty!" I would have thought by now that MS would have learned from watching their competition chase them, that when you spend your efforts chasing your competition instead of doing something new, you just end up looking like the bully buttmonkey who jealously wants what anyone else has, even if it already has most of the bananas.

I for one am tired of MS trying to rally the troops and the public cry by heralding itself as the underdog. If they've got something good, just go ahead and do it and we shall decide. But as they should have learned with the on-again, off-again release of Vista and the supposed killer search found in MSN, when you announce big and then it doesn't, it just makes you look foolish.