February 29 2008

Microsoft boosts ad targeting

Microsoft has agreed to acquire an Israeli behavioural targeting and customer segmentation technology firm to improve its online advertising platform.

Increased ROI for advertisers, more relevant advertising for consumers and higher yields for publishers are all cited as reasons for Microsoft’s agreement to acquire YaData (“you knew” in Hebrew).

YaData's technology will be integrated into Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group and will add advanced behavioural targeting tools and capabilities to Microsoft's online advertising platform. The addition of YaData’s technology will help Microsoft’s efforts to improve advertisers' ROI and to provide more focused and relevant advertising, tailored to specific client needs. In addition, the integration of YaData’s solutions with Microsoft will help improve Internet content creators’ ability to monetize their inventory.

Interestingly we were in Google yesterday and demographics came up in conversation and there was the usual pause before the usual answer of “we don’t need to do that as we’re giving you customers who intend to purchase”. Which is all well and good if you’re selling a product that users are familiar with, but if you’re promoting a new company/product/service then you need to be proactive with your marketing and as yet that’s not in Google’s mix. While Google can slice and dice users on location – we’ll talk about this next week as it’s something that e-tailers just aren’t using effectively - they still can’t slice and dice on demographics, unless the targets are YouTube or any of their properties where a user is required to register, and even then the data can only be sliced on gender and age.

Microsoft’s ability to slice and dice on demographics is still their only USP when it comes to search, and with the purchase of YaData, it’s obvious that it’s something that they intend to pursue aggressively in the future.

by Marcus Austin (Web Editor)