Microsoft Advertising Category

What Is ContextAds

myadmarket-comContextAds is a targeted advertising program designed for the Linden Lab Second Life virtual community. Selected ads of potential interest to individual end users are transmitted to computers, cellular telephones and other portable digital communications devices based on the content of user communications in the Second Life environment. In ContextAds, a group of subscribers called a “board” actively monitors the conversations of users, transmitting advertisements to individuals who input specific keywords. For example, if a user enters the phrase “audio system,” that user may subsequently see advertisements for amplifiers or speakers. The subscriber can then click on the ad and be transferred to a relevant Web site providing the opportunity to shop for items and purchase them if desired. Advertisers who join the ContextAds program bid on keywords but are charged only when one of their ads appears on a subscriber’s digital device. Read the rest of this entry »

Bing Advertising / Sponsored Links
May 11th, 2011 Posted in Microsoft Advertising | no comment »

Bing Ads (formerly Microsoft adCenter and MSN adCenter) is a service that provides pay per click advertising on both the Bing and Yahoo! search engines.

History

Microsoft was the last of the “big three” search engines (which also includes Google and Yahoo!) to develop its own system for delivering pay per click (PPC) ads. Until the beginning of 2006, all of the ads displayed on the MSN Search engine were supplied by Overture (and later Yahoo!). MSN collected a portion of the ad revenue in return for displaying Yahoo!’s ads on its search engine.

As search marketing grew, Microsoft began developing its own system, MSN adCenter, for selling PPC advertisements directly to advertisers. As the system was phased in, MSN Search (now Bing) showed Yahoo! and adCenter advertising in its search results. Microsoft effort to create AdCenter was led by Tarek Najm, then general manager of the MSN division of Microsoft. In June 2006, the contract between Yahoo! and Microsoft had expired and Microsoft was displaying only ads from adCenter until 2010.

In November 2006 Microsoft acquired DeepMetrix, a company situated in Gatineau, Canada, that created web-analytics software. Microsoft has built new product AdCenter Analytics based on the acquired technology. In October, 2007 the Beta version of Microsoft Project Gatineau was released to a limited number of participants.

In May 2007, Microsoft agreed to purchase the digital marketing solutions parent company, aQuantive, for roughly $6 billion.

Microsoft acquired ScreenTonic on May 3, 2007, AdECN on July 26, 2007, and YaData on February 27, 2008 and merged their technologies into adCenter.

On February 23, 2009, Publisher Leadership Council was created under the umbrella of Microsoft Advertising. The council was responsible to deliver the next-generation advertising platform for the publishers of digital media resulting in the formation of Microsoft pubCenter.

In January 2010, Microsoft announced a deal in which it would take over the functional operation of Yahoo! Search, and set up a joint venture to sell advertising on both Yahoo! Search and Bing known as the Microsoft Search Alliance. A complete transition of all Yahoo! sponsored ad clients to Microsoft adCenter occurred in October 2010.

On September 10, 2012, adCenter was re-named as Bing Ads, while the Search Alliance was re-named the Yahoo! Bing Network.

Technology

Similar to Google AdWords, Bing Ads uses both the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay per click (PPC) on their ad and the advertisement’s click-through rate (CTR) to determine how frequently an advertisement is shown. This system encourages advertisers to write effective ads and to advertise only on searches which are relevant to their advertisement.

Bing Ads allows advertisers to target their ads by restricting their ads to a given set of demographics and by increasing their bids whenever the ad is seen by a user of a certain demographic. As of November 2006, no other PPC advertising system has a similar feature. Similarly, Bing Ads allows advertisers to run their ads on specific days of the week or certain times of day.

Bing Ads also provides APIs that can be used to manage advertising campaigns.