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Microsoft Unveils Online Advertising Service
jwb4273 writes "Microsoft has released another weapon in its battle against Google. Steve Ballmer has announced today that Microsoft's web properties (MSN, Live, etc.) will no longer use Yahoo!'s advertising services, and will instead use Microsoft's new advertising platform 'adCenter'. For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship."
Yeah, I also like it when I'm trying to read an article and a 20mb flash application kicks up on top of what I'm trying to read telling me about Toyota's Western Washington specials. Like TFA's advertisements. That sure is awesome.
I love turning on the radio because I'm not looking for music, I'm looking for annoying talk about some product I'm missing out on. There's nothing like nodding your head to a good advertisement of a Fat Bastard impersonator trying to get you to come to Bub's Bar & Grill.
And now you want to make my mobile device throw random messages at me. Hey, maybe you can interrupt my personal telephone calls with advertisements from an annoying sounding person! That would be great.
And advertising in my productivity applications! And my games! *eye twitches* That's just
But why stop there? What boundaries does my personal life have yet that you have failed to knock down adn ignore? What about the novels I read? Can they have advertisements that cover up the words until I read them? Or maybe you could make software that injects product placement into scripts and storylines?
In fact, I love advertisements so much, you can tattoo me and inject electrodes into my head so all I do is think about Microsoft and how badly I want the XBox 360. Yes, I would finally be able to die happy!
If you hadn't noticed, I was being sarcastic.
My work here is dung.
If I actually wanted to run an ad with this service, I would go to adcenter.msn.com, click the "Sign up today" link and get "Microsoft adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6+." If I then click the "More about system requirements" link nothing happens. I guess I'll just keep my money.
The only way Microsoft has to promote their inferior product has been FUD campaigns and tons of self-promotion through marketing. They don't want any allies that could be potential rivals, and that includes Yahoo. Unless they intend to buy Yahoo (like they did with Bungie and Rare), they probably don't want to support a partner in a field they could dominate themselves for more profits. The only "allies" I've seen them interested in have been PC makers, and those are more like forced partnerships than friendly cooperations.
Go ahead, mod me down. You know I speak the truth.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
...and it's biggest liability.
They're so damned huge that the left hand really honestly doesn't know what the right one is doing. At least it sure seems that way, doesn't it?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
While anyone with a website or blog can sign up for AdSense and add it to their page... the same cannot yet be said for adCenter as for now it is only for Microsoft (and close partner) web properties.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
There's a difference between allowing people to do things with your software you'd rather them not (like looking up porn / google-smut), and actively appearing like you are endorsing such things (such as providing ad revenue for a porn site). One is passive endorsement, the other is proactive endorsement. It's like offering BitTorrent and looking the other way when it's used to rebroadcast American Idol episodes.
If there is ever a sign that a company is losing its relevance, it's when it stops innovating and starts copying its successful rivals. All this story says is that M$ has lots of places to put ads, and they're going to do it. What better way to please customers can you imagine?
What is this about them wanting to put ads into Office? Unless they are planning on giving out a free version that has ads, I highly doubt people are going to like that one bit. Paying $400 for a program that displays ads is BS. I don't any company or person is going to deal with that.
Unless they are wanting to push most people to something else I don't think that will fly very well.
Is this going to give me a reason to choose Microsoft for something over Google??? The mind boggles.
Oh, I can just imagine how well that's going to go over in our large site. How does MS expect to sell this to the corporate market? "Yes, MS Office is the most popular productivity suite in the world! And as an added bonus, we'll kill YOUR companies productivity by distracting all of your employees with tempting ads! Think about the boon to the economy! Instead of all those employees wasting time working for YOU, they can be promoting commerce and boosting the economy by spending their working hours shopping online!"
Even making it easy to disable wouldn't assuage many CTO's, because there is still a productivity loss as the IT guys disable the ads. It may be simple for one, but when you have thousands of installations, sometimes spread out over multiple locations, it's going to cost real money to fix.
The old adage "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind here. They're going to anger the majority of their customers, just to make it look like they're "competing" with Google. MS really has fallen...they're transforming themselves from the largest software company in the world into freaking Doubleclick.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
I'm curious which of their many sources they plan to use to get this info. Will they just borrow as much personal data as they can from your windows box and plug it into their ad service? Will they "patch" windows the way other spyware companies do? Do they already have all this info? I suppose I simply don't the idea of another more invasive ad program out there, but then I suppose it won't effect me immediatly, since I never use IE.
Oh, BTW, how would you like your job title to be "senior director for monetization." Is "monetization" even a word?
They're doing this to drive down the stock price of Yahoo, so it will be easier to purchase. It's just another clever tactic when you want to exercise your monopoly power.
stuff |
Funny how they tout their privacy-invasive demographic targeting stuff as a distinguishing feature of their system compared to Google. It's one thing for MS to know a lot about you, but by affecting the display of ads based on your personal information, some of it is being leaked to advertisers each time you click. No thanks, MS.
Microsoft is a tough bedmate. They'll pay Yahoo a few million as part of the courting process, get a good look at the goods, scr3w them a few times, then cut and run. Yahoo will cry ("you said you loved me"), probably sue, and loose a vast quantity of market share in the process; meanwhile Microsoft will have spent a few million crippling yet another competitor and gain major amounts of insight and technologies. In the end MSFT's focus is turning this into a two-horse race - them and Google, Yahoo is an innocent victim on MSFT's butcher's table.
Damien
Ads seem to work for TV but duh, weren't ads who were financiating all those .com bubbles before they bankrupted?
Ok, how the fuck can an article get tagged "floppingwienervision"? /. horde coming up with this description, and I'm sure it takes more than that to get an article tagged.
I can't imagine more than 2-3 people out of the whole
Well I guess they do plan ahead... seeing as how you cannot block anything from microsoft in the hosts file as its hardcoded
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
For years, people have wondered where Microsoft was going. A seemingly endless supply of ill-conceived and contradictory decisions, failed business projects, and general mismanagement gave the impression that there was no clear corporate vision. With the satuaration of the OS and Office software market, no one knew where MS would turn next to sustain the drug of growth.
No one except me, that is. Some said MS would go into being a conten provider. You fools. Porn sites are content providers, MS sells no porn. Others thought that Bill and Company were looking to get into the embedded device market. WTF were they smoking? Embedded devices have no need for brand names. Who cares what your VCR runs other than stinkfingered cheeto monkeys watching tapes of Enterprise frame by frame to see the T'Pol nipple shot?
No, the future is clear. MS must take their marketing talent and money to a new market. One that is unaccustomed to the trench fighting of the Tech sector. A ripe plum. Yes, I am talking about the snack cake market.
With the considerable leverage and investment capability, MS has the chance to swoop into the prepackaged pastry industry like Hitler into Poland. Sarah Lee is ripe for a takeover with the failure of their X-99 project of dehydrated cupcakes. With such a strong base, competitor after competitor could be gobbled up. In a few short years, there would be only one source for Coffee cakes, Twinkies, HoHo, DingDongs, Chocodiles, zingers, and snowballs.
Think I'm crazy? Get off the smack. The signs are there. The Xbox is nothing more than an activity inhibitor. Less active children eat more cupcakes. The BSOD was a conditioning system. Once MS introduces the blue frosting on their signautre snack bites, the dollars will flow.
This latest project is just a cover. The only ads running on the system in 10 years will be for BillBills and BalmerDogs. I just don't understand why people don't see it. Sheep.
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Uhhhh. How about you do some research about MS' history, then get back to us on their ability to innovate.
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Could MS be misusing all of that registration data they have been collecting? Or have they silently added another few hundred lines to their EULA / TOS?
Yep, especially considering that 87% of U.S. citizens can be uniquely identified by Zip+Gender+date of birth (see Sweeney, Uniqueness of Simple Demographics in the U.S. Population, 2000). They may as well be handing over your full name too.
Microsoft just lost me as a customer in yet another market: Microsoft adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6+.