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News About MSN’s Happenings
By Find2k | May 3, 2006
As it’s on all the news that MSN is set for war
MSN logs on to Reveille deal
Marking its first foray into original broadband content, Microsoft’s MSN online portal is finishing negotiations for a multiproject deal with “The Office” and “Biggest Loser” producer Reveille.Projects will fall under the MSN Originals banner the Netco is creating in a bid to draw advertisers to exclusive video content on its site.
MSN also made a deal with women’s home-improvement site BeJane to create video programming, and is expected to sign deals with several other Hollywood producers and Web content providers in the near future.
Deal includes a seven-figure guarantee by MSN against its expected pickup of Reveille series. Financial specifics weren’t available, but Reveille is expected to share in advertising revenue. Four projects already have been identified, with more expected to follow. They will include video and interactive components. Several will likely focus on shortform comedy.
Entry of MSN to the Web programming space ups the competition for America Online, which has a pact with Katalyst Films and is producing reality series “Gold Rush” with “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett.Yahoo! has deals with shows including “60 Minutes” and “Entertainment Tonight” for Web-exclusive clips and is developing reality series “The Runner” with Burnett; it hasn’t yet greenlit any original series made with Hollywood producers.
“This is the beginning of an overall initiative that we hope will include many partnerships to give us a broad portfolio of exclusive content offerings to help expand our audience and opportunities for our advertisers,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of entertainment and video services for MSN.
MSN will start pitching the shows to advertisers this week at its Strategic Accounts Summit with hopes of selling video ads and brand integration.Reveille plans to pitch some of the projects to other media, such as mobile, DVD and TV. In such a case, two companies would share ownership.”Some of the ideas are designed to launch online and then live on in different ways in other media,” Reveille topper Ben Silverman told Daily Variety.
“This deal is an absolute triangulation of MSN and Reveille’s advertising relationships with MSN’s technology and distribution and our creativity.”
Contributor: Josef Adalian
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MSN AdCenter is still in initial phases and when news like…. cost rose in PPC Campaigns of Google due to click fraud case. MSN Statement is a Bull’s eye.
As it was on Ecommerce Guide
MSN adCenter Aims for Better PPC Returns
The holy grail of search marketing is to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time.
But is reaching that goal worth the price of user privacy?
Using a mix of analytics and user demographics, Microsoft may well be further along on the quest of search ad nirvana than other search vendors.
In a session at Search Engine Strategies last week in Toronto on targeting search ads, Jason Bailey Search Media Strategist at Microsoft gave the standing-room-only crowd a demonstration of how Microsoft is using user demographics to fuel its new adCenter platform.
The MSN adCenter is Microsoft’s answer to Yahoo Overture and Google AdWords. It has been live in France and Singapore since September and a U.S. pilot has been active since October.
With MSN adCenter, advertisers can find out from a demographic point of view who the people are that are searching for a particular term. They can also find out geographic, as well as time-based information about the searchers.
Bailey explained that with adCenter, advertisers can target their ads by day of the week and also by specific time of day.
“Targeting and audience-intelligence tools are powerful because they let you create very surgical search campaigns,” Bailey said. “You can be very specific about the type of person you are looking for how and when you are reaching them and making sure that they are converting well.”
It’s not just about strategic information allowing advertisers to help plan campaigns, but it also works on a very tactical level on a case-by-case Search, as well.
For example, Bailey noted that you can actually do something called a “Bid Boost,” raising the value of a bid by a predetermined percentage, when adCenter recognizes that the searcher is from your desired user demographic.
Bailey did not address where Microsoft was actually getting its demographic information from during his presentation. It was only in response to an audience question that the Microsoft spokesperson admitted that the information is actually pulled based on users’ Microsoft Passport accounts.
Microsoft Passport is a unified single sign-on solution that powers many Microsoft services, including Hotmail and MSN Messenger, and is part of their new Windows Live services.
Kevin Lee, executive chairman and co-founder of Did-it.com, told the audience that it shouldn’t be too stunned that Microsoft Passport information is being used in this way.
“It’s a good thing for everybody,” Lee said. “I’m just hoping that the press doesn’t exclusively focus on the big brother aspect of it given the fact that people voluntarily provide this information.”
“These are users that did in fact click ‘yes’ to a 3,000 word terms of service agreement.”
Microsoft may not necessarily be alone in utilizing user demographic data for advertising purposes either. Andrew Goodman, principal of Page Zero Media, noted that, though Google does not have a similar product, they could easily do the same thing.
“Their privacy policy certainly allows them to pull a lot of searcher behavior,” Goodman said.
Potentially an increase in Google’s utilization of cookies could be an indication that it is ramping up its targeting efforts. Lee commented that Google is now using more cookies than in the past, though it is partially for the search personalization option but it could also be used for other purposes.
This article originally appeared on InternetNews.com.
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Topics: Internet Marketing and MSN |