Microsoft Advertising Blog

Introducing Our New UK Performance Team

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:58:00 GMT

Why do we all love digital advertising? I’d venture one of the main reasons is that it performs.

With more people coming online and the web becoming more and more an intrinsic part of our lives, the opportunities for marketers to harness the power of technology and reach consumers across properties like MSN, Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and Bing, are becoming more and more relevant…..and valuable.

Much of the onus is put on the platform, the data, and the accountability. But here at Microsoft Advertising, we also pride ourselves on how we service our customers.

People are our best asset, and today we’re announcing a new team in the UK which aims to take our customers’ network campaigns to the next level.

Katy Bell, who’s been with the company for 4 years, will head up a new Performance Team that will work alongside our UK display account managers to ensure a smooth, seamless experience across brand and performance campaigns, not just for our advertisers, but our audience as well.

Keeping a message consistent across multiple screens benefits users as well as the brand’s return online. So having a team that can keep these campaigns true demonstrates our commitment to both the users who spend time on our services, and those advertisers who spend money with us reaching them.

Chris Maples, who heads up advertising sales in the UK said, “This is a hugely exciting development for Microsoft’s advertising business as it seeks to deliver a complete end to end solution for advertising networks. Our mission is to become the most trusted and valuable media partner to our clients. By putting this dedicated team together, with experience from across the business, we feel we are far better placed to exceed client expectations. The digital industry remains incredibly exciting and dynamic with this new team allowing us to engage with advertising networks in a highly targeted way.”

For more on advertising with Microsoft in the UK visit: http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk

Thanks

Mel

Xbox Lips Lite Case Study has Games Advertising Singing Digital

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:34:00 GMT

On the Microsoft Advertising Blog, we like to bring you the very latest digital insight in the form of case studies and proof points, so today we’re talking Games Advertising.

Whether it’s JJ Richards on in-game advertising or Mark Kroese showing how we’re helping brands reach consumers through Xbox LIVE advertising, there is no doubt that online gaming is becoming a huge area in an advertiser's multi-screen armoury.

When it came to promoting the new Xbox game Lips Party Classics, the objectives were pretty straightforward.

The team wanted to drive awareness of the new game, increase purchase intent, and create interest in console ownership among a predominantly female audience. They also wanted to engage less frequent gamers, creating interest & buzz about the brand.

The solution, which ran in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, was a creative game experience where a taste of the full Lips game could be had via Windows Live Messenger.

Consumers were invited to record a song with friends and family using Messenger. They could choose to perform one of five tunes, including Cameo’s Word Up, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, and have their friends tuning in through their conversation windows.

Pre-and post-roll rich media ads, as well as links within the game, promoted the full Lips console title to the admiring masses.

Let’s take a look at the results:

695,000 unique users played the game
7.5% clicked through to the Xbox Lips site
Lips Lite players spent a total of over 6.7 years playing the game

Research in the UK & France where we chatted to 270 Windows Live users aged 16-35 told us how engaging the campaign was:

62% of those playing the game did so more than once, over half (54%) sang more than two songs
83% said that they enjoyed playing the game
57% described the game as Fun, 35% as Modern and 29% as Something New

As for word of mouth and purchase intent:

35% are likely to play again in the future
29% said they would play often or quite a lot
8 in 10 said that they would recommend the game to others
20% of those playing said they were likely or very likely to go on to buy the full Lips Xbox game
Amongst Xbox owners the number likely to buy rose to 35%

The games advertising mantra is very much about “Invite. Don’t interrupt!”

In this case, the team created a simple vehicle that aligned with the product they were marketing, provided a fun environment for consumers to learn about the game, and generated mechanisms to share their delight and create awareness in a viral way.

For more on games advertising in Europe visit: Online Games Advertising

Cheers

Mel

Get Great Digital Ideas from our US and EMEA Creative Showcase

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:51:00 GMT

Bereft of digital ideas? Looking for some creative inspiration?

Check out our brand new Creative Showcase. You’ll get to experience a full range of digital experiences and creative executions – from simple banners to innovation multi-screen campaigns.

You can search campaigns by top verticals, ad formats, countries and properties.

If you’re looking for something specific, use the search bar. Or simply select see all to visually browse the thumbnails for whatever looks interesting.

Each campaign includes a short description with insight into the advertiser’s brand, their communication challenges, the campaign implementation or other helpful information.

Click through to view our US Sizzle Reel video highlighting some of the more innovative Microsoft Advertising campaigns we’ve put together in partnership with brands and agencies.

If you’re not based in America, our team in London has compiled an EMEA Creative Showcase with their own video featuring Creative Digital Advertising Ideas.

Look for new and exciting campaigns from Advertisers and Rich Media Vendors to be added to the showcases each month.

Pretty groovy huh? Do let us know what you think!

Cheers

Mel

Test Your Digital Quotient in our Asia Advertising Competition

Mel Carson - MSFT — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:14:27 GMT

Our team at Microsoft Advertising Asia are giving advertisers and agencies in the Far East the chance to pit their digital wits against each other in an innovative competition to win a trip to the Spikes Asia Advertising Festival.

The DQ Test is open to residents aged over 18 in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, and is designed to quiz your knowledge of Digital Basics, Digital Media Trends, Consumer Behaviour, Ad Performance and Digital Creativity.

At the time of writing, 236 challengers have participated, and the competition runs until 3rd September when Gold, Silver and Bronze Digital Gurus will find out if they have earned enough points to take their place in our Hall of Fame.

So do pass this post on and get your teams involved. You could be on your way to Spikes or the proud owner of an Xbox 360.

Just go to our Microsoft Advertising Digital Quotient site and take the test!

For more update from the Asia team follow them on Twitter and Facebook

Good luck!

Mel

New Digital Research: Consumer Multi-Screen Study from Microsoft and Wunderman

Michelle Strub - MSFT — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:30:00 GMT

You may have seen news about Microsoft Advertising’s multi-screen advertising capabilities over the past year. Do Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch,” ABC’s “Flash Forward,” History Channel’s “America: The Story of US,” or NBC’s fall line-up ring a bell?

Given the recent success of these campaigns we wanted to dig deeper to understand multi-screen usage and consumers’ attitudes and expectations for multi-screen experiences. The study covered activities across computers, smart phones, TVs and game consoles, and the results were eye-opening:

· 69 percent of multi-screen consumers believe that being able to access similar content (media and advertising) across different screens makes the content more useful and their media experience more relevant and informative.

· 80 percent of consumers surveyed expect improvement in the delivery of content and advertising across devices – and they report that these improvements will increase their engagement.

The way consumers interact with brands, products and services is dramatically impacted by digital media. Consumers are using their PCs, mobile phones, TVs and XBOX Live (sometimes at the same time!) to perform the same functions, whether to research products, for social networking, to play games, or make purchases. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to offer marketers advertising solutions across all of these screens while delivering access to a large and growing audience of over 161 million unique visitors in the US, (comScore, June 2010), with high levels of engagement and impact.

As multi-screen activity becomes more mainstream, marketers have the unique opportunity now to work with their media partners to figure out how to reach their target audience in the right place at the right time, to improve relevance and results. For more on this study, download our Multi-Screen Consumer White Paper.

Alison Engel, senior marketing director, for Microsoft Advertising, will unveil more from the white paper at today’s OMMA Metrics event in San Francisco on July 22, 2010.

“Microsoft’s leadership in researching and understanding consumers across multiple digital screens and mobile channels is not only impressive and comprehensive; it’s timely for helping to inform agencies, companies, vendors, practitioners. We’re thrilled they can join us on stage at OMMA Metrics this week to unveil new findings from their recent study about the impact of advertising across multiple screens and what it means for the future of advertising.” –Judah Phillips, senior director, Global Site Analytics, Monster Worldwide, Inc. and chair for the OMMA Metrics Conference

For those of you unable to make the trip to San Francisco, you can register now for a webinar overview of the research hosted by ANA on August 4, 2010 (requires membership).

Thanks,

Michelle

The Bifurcating Display Advertising Industry

Eric Dahlberg - MSFT — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:41:00 GMT

The world of online display advertising as we know it is bifurcating.

The display ad market, which accounted for $8.0B of the $22.7B in total internet advertising revenues in 2009 – and is projected to grow to $13.4B by 2013 – is rapidly headed in two very different directions.

One direction leads to a land of increasingly complex, but incredibly engaging and custom solutions that make full use of the digital palette. The other direction leads to the land of “scale display”, where programmatic buying, measurement, and constant refinement yield search-like efficiencies long promised in display but not yet delivered. And in the middle… well, going forward there won’t be much left in the middle. The bread and butter of the display advertising market today – those old-fashioned sponsorships and simply-targeted audience buys – are rapidly being cannibalized by the superior solutions down one of the two aforementioned roads.

Microsoft Advertising is committed to compelling offerings for marketers heading in either direction, and of course we expect most to build robust marketing campaigns that include elements of both.

Custom Brand Solutions

A sizeable chunk of the business is headed down one road and is becoming more custom, more premium, more integrated, and more interactive. Big brand advertisers – accustomed to launching campaigns via a flood of 30 second spots – are pushing online publishers to deliver on the full promise of the digital canvas with interactive solutions that help them stand out. “One of a kind”, “never been done before”, and “big idea” are phrases commonly found on RFP’s. To win this business and snag some of those big TV budgets that everyone in digital advertising salivates over, publishers are going to greater lengths than ever before to accommodate big brands via deep integration into site content, intense collaboration between advertiser and publisher, and large, custom ad formats.

Microsoft Advertising continues to aggressively target this “high rent district” of display advertising, with captivating rich media executions on the new MSN Home Page, three screen solutions across the PC, TV, and mobile devices, custom integration opportunities on Wonderwall, and Glo, and other offerings too numerous to count.

Scale Display

The other road leads to an increasingly crowded market full of new intermediaries including demand side platforms, ad exchanges, agency trading desks, pub brokers, dynamic creative optimizers, and data providers who are sharing what was an already crowded space full of hundreds of ad networks. These players, both new and old, are rushing to create a niche for themselves in the emerging world of scale display, which promises to bring the efficiencies of search marketing to online display advertising.

Increasingly, scale display and the participation of these intermediaries is dependent on the efficiencies enabled by an advertising exchange. Microsoft is moving aggressively to provide our customers with access to our owned and operated inventory, as well as partner inventory, via our exchange. This move is in addition to our expansion of the Microsoft Media Network, which combined with the exchange, provides a holistic solution for our customers. In recent weeks we have on-boarded US Windows Live inventory - including Hotmail and Messenger - into our exchange, providing a highly liquid pool of high quality inventory to demand partners on an RTB basis. We have integrated with each of the major DSP’s to ensure that our customers can work with the partner of their choice in accessing inventory.

Moving forward we will make available the rest of our US owned and operated inventory and partner supply. We’re excited about the efficiencies offered by an exchange-enabled ecosystem, and are committed to providing a foundation that enables innovation by allowing third parties to add value in a transparent, trustworthy ecosystem.

There is additional good news for Atlas clients in that over the next six months we will be integrating DSP’s into the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance. This will enable Atlas advertisers to seamlessly partner with the DSP of their choice to extend their buys onto RTB exchanges while enjoying all the benefits of campaign tracking and optimization that Atlas already provides.

The digital advertising landscape continues to evolve and be an exciting place. At Microsoft Advertising we’re working hard to provide marketers with compelling solutions no matter which road they are on.

Thanks,

Eric

TED Talks @ Cannes – Two Online Now

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:06:00 GMT

You may remember we hosted TED@Cannes last month, and I’ve just been pinged by them to let me know a couple of the talks that were recorded there have been edited and are now online.

Hans Rosling on population growth.

“The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).”

Clay Shirky on how cognitive surplus will change the world.

“Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world.”

Don’t forget to check out our “behind the scenes” look at TED in Cannes video too!

Cheers

Mel

Video: The Future of Advertising is Here - Kostas Mallios - Digital Showcase NYC

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:08:15 GMT

Kostas Mallios, GM of Corporate R&D at Microsoft, speaking at our Digital Showcase event in New York last month.

He talks about the experience on Windows Phone 7, demos Pivot from Microsoft Live Labs, and gives the assembled advertisers and agencies his opinion of the future of advertising.

Check out Joshua Green’s presentation on Viruses Make you Ill from the event as well.

Cheers

Mel

What’s Your Digital Dream?

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:46:20 GMT

Our tag line at Microsoft Advertising is “You Dream It. We Deliver It.”

The premise is, that with advertising going more digital, some aspects of marketing are now a software problem.

So how can Microsoft’s technology, strong background and experience in marketing our own products, coupled with our huge audiences around the world, help the industry realise some of its dreams.

In this 5 minute video, shot at the Cannes Lions Festival last month, senior folk from agencies and brands from all over the world share their digital dreams.

Listen to these mobile, platform, multi-screen and data desires, then tell us about your dreams and what you’d like to see us deliver.

Comment below or reply to us on Twitter!

Cheers

Mel

Video: Viruses Make You Ill – Joshua Green - Digital Showcase NYC

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:29:27 GMT

Last month, our team in New York held an event for advertisers and agencies that set out to showcase digital marketing and inspire the attendees with thoughts on content, social media and how we use technology.

In this first video, Joshua Green, a fantastic speaker and former media researcher at MIT now based at the University of California, challenges the notion of what makes something viral and raises questions about how we evaluate that earned media.

More videos and insight later in the week…

Cheers,

Mel

Time for Travel to Look Outside the Box - 5 Tips

Geraldine M - MSFT — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:43:00 GMT

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been inspired by the World Cup. The strategy of each game is what drives my enthusiasm, and I believe that coaches and players who are willing to take risks bring even more excitement to the game.

As I think about travel marketing strategies, I tend to see a lot of the same tactics over and over again: search, travel sites, email, TV, and magazines with some budgets for mobile, social media, and video. All of these channels have their place, but I envy the verticals that look outside the box and embrace branding with gusto. CPG clients find moms across a variety of different sites, such as MSN Entertainment, MSN Games, MSN Lifestyle, Glo, Wonderwall, and Delish. Auto clients look to Xbox, FoxSports, MSN Money, MSNBC, and MSN Movies for their affluent audience.

Slowly, Travel advertisers are starting to look outside traditional ROI-driving sites to find their audience. We’re starting to see clients move their outdoor budgets to in-gaming advertising on Xbox, find niche travel audiences for cooking vacations on Delish, and discover adventure travelers on MSN Health & Fitness. We’re moving in the right direction, but I’d like to see more Travel advertisers taking risks -- just like those World Cup players.

To ensure these branding strategies result in new business on your site, here are some things to consider to increase consumer engagement and conversions:

Be sure your metrics are realistic and in line with industry and specific segment trends.
Make sure that even the least tech-savvy people can move around the site with ease. When you’re a part of the industry, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics.
Use your loyalty program. If you haven’t already, ask your most loyal fans what they like and don’t like about your site. Keep the survey brief and simple!
Make traveling through your website a personal experience. Segment your audience based on new or past travel, demographics, or previous behaviors.

Whether you provide a more personalized shopping experience for customers or use new, engaging venues to make a fresh introduction of your brand, these are great ways to up your game.

Thanks,

Geraldine

Microsoft Advertising Travel Industry Specialist

Cannes Lions 2010 – A Digital Reflection

Mark Young - MSFT — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:01:00 GMT

First, great to see so many people return to Cannes!

If my increased bill for rose wine on the Carlton patio was any indication, the mood and the attendance was completely different than 12 months ago.

Marketers were looking for innovation and creativity along with results and ROI, not just cost savings and agencies were talking about innovation and……digital, digital, digital.

A year ago, we at Microsoft were talking about our first multi-screen wins and blending our technology with our partners creative. This year, it seems our competitors are catching up to that theme.

That of course means that we at Microsoft Advertising, have to keep pushing forward too, and I think with our announcements of Kinect for Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7 and DeepZoom ads, we are in a great spot to continue to push the envelope with our partners across all the touch points that our partners’ customers are taking in.

It was great to have so many conversations about how to use the new offerings to attract, obtain and retain customers globally.

Finally, I think next year’s big conversation will be how do we take this to the emerging markets effectively. There’s no question big consumer advertisers are looking to digital as a way to effectively reach customers in emerging geographies, and clear that we’re all still searching for “efficient” ways to accommodate.

Hope to see you all in a few months at Advertising Week!

Mark

Join us for a Social Media Party with IAB UK in London

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:47:00 GMT

On Thursday in London, myself and Kate Box, who heads up social media advertising sales in the UK, will be donning our party gear and joining a host of speakers to evangelise about social media marketing best practices.

Kate and I have been asked to talk about how you should promote your “party” and what tactics, free and paid, you can use to make your target audience aware that you have a social media presence.

Other speakers from 1000heads, Innocent, BT and Sony Europe will be joining us for this event which looks like being a fun, engaging and informative afternoon of social media insight.

Check out the agenda here and find out how you can get your invite!

Cheers

Mel

Innovation in Mobile Experiences – Advertising and Windows Phone 7

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:21:13 GMT

“Mobile advertising growth is eight times the growth of online over TV in the same time frame,” says Charles Johnson who heads up Mobile Advertising for Microsoft.

In his presentation at our business conference in Cannes 10 days ago, Charles took the audience through the opportunities in mobile advertising, how targeting capabilities are getting more sophisticated, and gave a sneek peek into Windows Phone 7.

Mobile has to be one the most exciting areas in digital right now, and Charles does a great job of enthusing the assembled with insight to get those creative juices flowing.

For more on ways to get your business/brand in front of mobile users, check out our Mobile Advertising site.

Enjoy!

Mel

Online Advertising in China Insight from Nokia and Procter and Gamble

Mel Carson - MSFT — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:19:18 GMT

Our trip to Cannes this year was fruitful, not only because of the awards and seminars, but because we were able to mix and mingle with advertisers and marketers from all over the world.

In this video, we chatted to some big brands in China, and got some great ideas on how best to think about advertising in the region.

We hear about mobile advertising in China, how gaming is huge, and that targeting locally is key.

For more details on how you can connect with our audience in Asia, check out our Asia Advertising Site.

Cheers

Mel