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Microsoft Says Not All Ad Clicks Are Created Equal

kyle6477 writes to share that Microsoft is hoping to change the way advertising is thought of, and ultimately valued, online. Their new Engagement ROI tool tries to track a user's ad clicking habits and distribute the credit over all of the ads that led to an eventual sale as opposed to the last ad clicked getting all the credit. "Say a consumer sees an ad for a product in a video ad one day, and then clicks on a text ad to visit the retailer's site the next day, and then eventually sees a banner ad that leads to a purchase. All of the monetary credit tends to go to the text link that was clicked on."

6 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. How does this degrade? by pembo13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I barely trust javascript from Google, I trust even less stuff from Microsoft, so how well would their algorithms work without client side scripts?

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    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  2. Re:My guess by mrxak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, google's text ads are perfectly reasonable, and those flash-based ones are atrocities. What's kind of interesting is how people pretty much block them out subconsciously after a while, especially if they become used to the site after visiting it numerous times. I guess that's why web ad companies suggest people move them around and try to make them look as much like actual content as possible.

  3. Like sports, person who passes ball gets an assist by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In short, Microsoft is developing a solution in search of a problem.

    Like in sports, the person who passes the ball/puck/etc does not do the scoring but they do get credit for the assist. Doing so in advertising does make logical sense, and it also seems to be a more fair system. Be careful that you are not against a good idea merely because it was from Microsoft, if Google had suggested this would you have had the same reactions?

    Either that or it's just another attempt at tracking the consumer's every last act, hidden under a patina of equitable distribution of ad revenue.

    To continue in the theme of the above question, does it bother you that google is actually doing so? Mining email, etc?

  4. Re:Just an exuse by thrillseeker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    how would this be implemented?

    Some sort of spyware would be built into the OS/Sivlerlight/whatever - it would be a "selling point" to get vendors to require the end user to accept such a thing in order to use the website.

  5. Re:Equal ads by haystor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To spell it out...every time anything on slashdot mentions ads, the first 100 or so posts are people commenting on how they haven't seen ads in years. They make these comments like the signal to noise ratio needed to satisfy their massive intellect needs to approach 100%. Then of course they proceed to fill up all the comments with the noise of one person saying "Adblock..." and 99 saying, "me too".

    - I don't care that you use AdBlock. If it's an ask slashdot about how to block ads, by all means post in response to that.
    - I also don't care about all of you that don't even have a tv but must comment on every tv story.
    - Nor do I care that Go is deeper than chess unless we're already discussing both of them (not just one).

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    t
  6. Re:New Marketing Strategy by Omestes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can't even do this anymore. Even before AdBlock ubiquitous ads (noise) caused my brain to automatically filter the header of websites, the same with the 2 minute blocks between television shows. With AdBlock the topic is invalidated of course, since I never deal with online ads. But with television sometimes my family/friends comment on an ad that was just on, and I have no awareness of what the hell they are talking about. If you were a young ape in the forest you couldn't survive being aware of every useless detail (noise), thus you filter them out unless they are actually useful.

    I'm just getting sick of how ubiquitous they are now, thanks to the increase in advertising I pretty much stopped watching TV and going to sporting events, since the actual events have pretty much turned into a mere advertisement for the advertisements. The event is only a way to get you to see ads, and thus has as much content as the ads themselves, none.

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    A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey