Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’
Éste es un artículo por Michael Learmonth @ adage.com
It will be at least nine months and probably closer to a year before Microsoft takes over Yahoo’s search infrastructure, theoretically consolidating 28% of the U.S. search market and mounting the first credible challenge on Google in a decade.
But it’s not too early for marketers to wonder if they need to ask: Do we, uh, speak Bing?
One thing is certain: figuring that out is going to amount to a mini stimulus package for digital agencies and search-engine-optimization consultants in the first half of 2010.
Turning up on the first page of organic search results when someone types your product or brand into a keyword box is pretty much the cost of entry for any substantial e-commerce entity or marketer. And for the past decade or so that’s meant pretty much one thing: optimize your site for Google, maybe a tweak or two for Yahoo, and everything else, well, didn’t matter all that much.
«If you were well-optimized for Google, you were pretty much set, because it means you were well-optimized for everyone else out there,» said John Ragals, chief operating officer of digital agency 360i. «The gap wasn’t significant enough to warrant the extra investment.»
But Bing is quite a bit different from Google and Yahoo, both in the way it ranks pages and the way it presents results on the page. And if search becomes more of a two-player market, it could mean a return to the late ’90s, when it was common for marketers to create separate pages optimized for Yahoo, Google, Lycos and AltaVista, and as they do now for the iPhone or other mobile devices.
«You’d effectively have two pages, one for Google and one for Bing,» said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com. If all goes according to plan, Yahoo will make the switch to Bing’s organic search results in the third quarter of next year, and then fold in Bing’s paid search results soon after.
«We’ve been getting a lot of questions from clients about the differences,» said Craig McDonald, chief marketing officer of digital agency Covario. «This will have an impact in the first half of next year.»
Shooting for the top five
The big challenge for marketers will be to figure out how to land among the top five spots on both search engines. That is particularly true for Bing, which often shows only five organic results on its first page — after which it groups results into categories. Position six on Google may mean users have to scroll down to see the result; on Bing users have to click to the second page.
«If you are not coming up in the top five [search results] for the very generic terms, you are not getting page-one exposure, which means you are losing out on 70% to 80% of searchers,» said Collin Cornwell, VP of natural search at iCrossing.
That’s a tough challenge for marketers, given that one of the top spots is generally dominated by Wikipedia, leaving really only four slots to make an impression. Or consider the plight of a movie marketer optimizing a film’s lead actor: the top three results are dominated by IMDb, Wikipedia and the actor’s «official» site — leaving only two available.
The upside of having results categorized is there’s an opportunity for aggressive marketers to have more than one listing on a page for non-branded queries — not including whatever paid keyword listings the marketer may or may not be buying. For example, a search for «heart rate monitor» might pull up the website of manufacturer Polar USA in the first five organic search results and it might also pull up, under the video category, a Polar demo of how to use a heart rate monitor.
Bing also offers different placements for photos and video, which means opportunities for marketers that produce both.
Still tweaking algorithm
Fundamentally, Google’s algorithms give more weight to inbound links, while Bing focuses more on the content or the keywords contained on pages. That said, Microsoft is still tweaking Bing, so any strategy formed today might have to change when the integration with Yahoo takes place. And all of this will get shaken up if and when both engines make real-time search of, say, Twitter or Facebook updates part of their strategies.
How much to invest in Bing is a calculation marketers will make this fall as they plan website development and put together budgets for 2010. While each has its own goals and search strategies, if Bing/Yahoo can retain 25% share, it will be too big for most marketers to ignore. And with apologies to Ask.com and others, it will be the first time in years that marketers will be able to optimize for two players and get virtually 100% of the search market.
«You gauge the amount of effort and investment based on its potential return,» said Gregory Markel, CEO of digital-marketing firm Infuse Creative. «If you are killing it on Google and there is room to grow, or if Twitter is delivering traffic to you, you would maximize them first. But if you wake up one morning and Bing has 30% market share, then that’s a different conversation.»
Éste es un artículo por Stephanie Clifford @ The New York Times
In an effort to fend off federal regulation, major trade groups in the ad vertising industry have announced stricter guidelines on how their members use and collect online data.
In a report to be released Thursday, a consortium of the trade groups intends to address a growing concern in Washington and among consumer advocates that people are being tracked too much online, with information about their Web surfing, shopping habits and overall interests being collected for advertising purposes.
Congress held hearings on the subject in June, asking executives from Facebook, Google and Yahoo to testify, and the Federal Trade Commission issued a report in February that urged updated principles for self-regulation. All along, most advertisers, agencies and publishers have been arguing that they can keep an eye on their own practices, and don’t need government intervention.
The jump in interest from Washington hastened the report’s release, said Stuart P. Ingis, a partner at the Venable law firm and a lawyer for the trade groups.
“We believe that self-regulation, historically, it’s proven to be far more dynamic and flexible in this area,” Mr. Ingis said. “Legislation is a pretty blunt instrument and we hope, legislation or not, these are the right standards.”
The report, “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising,” reflects several of the commission’s suggestions from February. The principles are meant to go into effect in 2010, affecting the more than 5,000 companies that belong to the sponsoring organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Disney and Verizon.
In one big change, the report instructs members to provide notice, either in an ad or on a Web site (rather than hidden in the privacy policy), that behavioral information is being collected.
“For years, consumer groups, and most recently the F.T.C. and people on the Hill, had been calling for transparency at the time of collection” of data, Mr. Ingis said. “So for the first time — we think it’s a monumental shift — there will be transparency provided across the ecosystem.”
Mr. Ingis said the exact form of the notice had not been decided on — it could be a link that says “Why did I get this?” or “interest-based advertising,” meaning information on advertising based on Web visits and behaviors, he said. “All that is to be determined following the rollout of the principles,” he said. “The requirement is that it be clear, meaningfully prominent and uniform.”
The report also suggests an enforcement process, so that competitors or consumers can bring complaints if a company violates the principles. “Programs will also, at a minimum, publicly report instances of noncompliance and refer entities that do not correct violations to the appropriate government agencies,” the report says.
It also says consumers must approve the collection of “sensitive data” — mostly on finances or health.
Some privacy advocates have been pushing for more stringent rules, saying, for instance, that consumers must explicitly approve all data collection.
Mr. Ingis said that was not feasible.
“If you had that as a default, you would wind up undercutting significantly the economic underpinnings for all the stuff the public loves,” he said. “The way, operationally, that would work is every time a consumer’s doing their Web surfing, you’d be requiring them to click through all these options. Consumers would hate that.”
Another issue privacy watchdogs have raised is that consumers have no access to the data being collected about them — it is all done behind the scenes.
Giving consumers access to the data is “an interesting concept,” Mr. Ingis said, noting that what the companies collect shows up as “a bunch of ones and zeros.”
“The data is in computer wording, programming speak, and to the consumer would mean nothing,” he said.
(A handful of online companies, including Google, have translated the data, however, and have said they will give consumers access.)
“Of course they can give the profile information, the profile information can be translated,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy advocacy group, when asked about Mr. Ingis’s statement. “People need to have access to their entire profile, and this is a thinly veiled excuse so that the companies can retain the data without giving consumers control over their information.”
The announcement of the report includes an advertising campaign to publicize the new standards. Members of the consortium include the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers (which represents companies that advertise, like McDonald’s or General Electric) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Their members have pledged 500 million impressions, or views by readers, over the next year and a half to promote the changes.
“I am gratified that a group of influential associations — representing a significant component of the Internet community — has responded to so many of the privacy concerns raised by my colleagues and myself,” Pamela Jones Harbour, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, said in a statement. The report has “the potential to dramatically advance the cause of consumer privacy,” she said.
Charles H. Kennedy, a lawyer at Morrison & Foerster who focuses on communications and advertising and did not work on the report, gives it a mixed review.
“These principles are especially strong in the area of notice or transparency,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s a little less clear, I think, on consent and how it’s going to be obtained and what it’s going to consist of.”
He said that although the Federal Trade Commission seemed to be increasing its enforcement in the online-marketing world — last month, it settled with Sears over charges that its marketing software did not disclose all the information it collected — he expected self-regulation would win out.
“What we will see at minimum is the F.T.C. will continue to bring individual enforcement actions, like the one they brought against Sears, that will be intended to signal to industry the kind of practices the agency wants to see,” he said. “It’s sort of an informal way of making rules without making rules.”
He added, “I think self-regulation ultimately is going to be the solution, and this is a big step in the right direction.”
Éste es un artículo por Abbey Klaassen @ adage.com
Microsoft has long built enterprise software solutions for myriad industries: retail, health care, sales. But now it has its eye on advertising.
The software company and Mediabrands, the media division of Interpublic Group of Cos. that counts Microsoft as a major ad client, are collaborating to build a software system that marketers can use to track everything from search advertising and e-mail newsletters to CRM systems to TV buys in one place.
The logic is that too many of the tools used today to analyze and execute those various marketing functions don’t «talk» with one another, which creates inefficiencies and clouds decision-making. Microsoft’s goal is to create a single platform to do so.
«We haven’t had the Office Suite, a productivity suite, for marketing» that fits marketing-management systems into a larger intelligent platform, said Quentin George, chief digital officer at Mediabrands. He went on: «Donovan [Data Systems] does billing and reconciliation, another group does planning tools, another group does asset management. And we spend a lot of time and effort stitching those together. … This is the first time we’ve had a platform player like Microsoft actively going out and saying ‘We think this is a software challenge and all sorts of these elements can be deployed in a far more synchronized way.'»
Holy grail for marketers
Microsoft and Mediabrands are calling the software platform the Media Operations Management System — and they’re certainly not underselling what they envision the final product to be. The announcement touts it as «intended to reinvent the way media is planned, purchased, measured, reported and optimized.» And Scott Howe, corporate VP of Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher solutions group, likened the effect of the yet-to-be-implemented platform to that of the first investment bank to use a spreadsheet instead of calculators and slide rules. He said the visibility they’re going to provide is the holy grail for marketers.
Actual implementation remains a ways away. Microsoft said it’ll be turning on pieces of the platform from now to the end of the year; Mediabrands said it plans to take the offer to clients by year’s end and that the timeline for it being built depends entirely on clients.
«We haven’t built the system and you can’t build a system until you sit down with a client,» said Mr. George. When asked whether he thought Microsoft might be Mediabrands’ first client to use it, he said who the first client is remains to be seen, and that there is a separation between Microsoft the marketing organization and Microsoft the online-advertising organization.
For Microsoft the money-making organization, building out an enterprise business for advertising is a revenue opportunity in a couple of ways. First, there’s the direct revenue it could get from licensing more software to the ad industry. Second, «as we develop more collaborative long-term relationships with major partners, there’s a chance that by doing so that could lead to up-selling of other Microsoft products and services,» said Mr. Howe. He insisted that there’s no conflict of interest in this because the insights such a software platform could give marketers on where to put their ad dollars will be driven by ROI «and we won’t be defining those standards.»
More platforms to come?
Incidentally, the platform may be another sign of Microsoft’s ongoing business rivalry with Google, which has spoken of building out a brand «dashboard.» At an Interactive Advertising Bureau annual meeting in March 2008, then-head of Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher solutions, Brian McAndrews, told the crowd there would probably be two major ad platforms in the future and that Microsoft would be one of them. (You can guess who the other might be.)
Mr. Howe said that this is indeed the platform Microsoft has envisioned, but that he’s not sure there will only be two. He thinks Microsoft’s own offering will look different depending on who’s using it and what kinds of ways they want to customize it.
Éste es un artículo por Georgina Prodhan @ reuters.com
Silicon Valley venture capital firm DAG Ventures has joined the backers of online advertising startup OpenX, leading a series C funding round of $10 million that takes total investment in the company to $31 million.
OpenX is an independent competitor to advertising services offered by Google (GOOG.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), Yahoo (YHOO.O) and Time Warner’s (TWX.N) AOL. It is run by industry veteran and former head of Yahoo’s search business, Tim Cadogan.
The company said on Tuesday it would use some of the new funding to accelerate development of an online ad marketplace it launched last month that is designed to make it easier for smaller Web publishers and advertisers to find each other.
Advertisers are faced with an explosion in the number of Websites run by small publishers, some of whom have valuable niche audiences, while the publishers often find it hard to get the best value from ad platforms run by the likes of Google.
Cadogan said OpenX, whose more than 300 billion ad impressions per month put it in the same league as Google’s DoubleClick in terms of volume, would now be able to explore other forms of online advertising, such as video and mobile.
«We increasingly see a range of opportunities – new markets, related markets, new product lines that we could get into,» he told Reuters by telephone from OpenX’s headquarters in California. The company also has offices in London and Poland.
Publishers are increasingly turning to Internet advertising as they chase dwindling audiences for their print products, who are racing online. Some, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O), are considering charging consumers for online content.
Cadogan said he believed those publishers who could survive the next year or two would have many more possibilities to make money out of their online offers than they currently do.
«I think we’re on the cusp of a renaissance in online advertising outside of search,» he said.
«The next year is definitely tough, but I do think within the next one to two years you’re going to see a new level of quality, value, and consumer value of ads.»
Existing investors in OpenX — Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital, First Round Capital and company Chairman Jonathan Miller — also participated in the latest funding round.
Miller has recently been appointed News Corp’s new digital media chief.
Éste es un artículo @ baquia.com
Microsoft dará a conocer esta semana Bing (antes conocido como Kumo), su nueva tecnología de búsqueda con la que pretende hacer frente a Google y Yahoo! en este sector, y aumentar sus ingresos en el mercado de anuncios relacionados.
Microsoft está a punto de mostrar al mundo su última apuesta para hacer frente a Google y (en menor medida) Yahoo! en el terreno de los buscadores. Será esta semana durante el congreso All Things Digital, que se celebrará en California, cuando se presente Bing, que sustituye el nombre en clave con que se conocía el proyecto hasta ahora, Kumo.
Steve Ballmer, CEO de Microsoft, será uno de los conferenciantes, y probablemente el encargado de presentar en sociedad a Bing.lo más probable es que esta semana se haga una demostración del funcionamiento del producto, que no estará plenamente operativo para el público hasta comienzos de junio.
Hace tiempo que se sabe que Microsoft está desarrollando una nueva tecnología de búsqueda, con la que pretende hacer frente al poderío de Google en este sector, que acapara el 64% de las consultas en buscadores en EEUU (un porcentaje aún mayor en Europa) y Yahoo! (20%), frente apenas el 8% de la red de servicios de MSN.
Lógicamente, detrás de ese interés está el reparto del mercado de publicidad en anuncios relacionados, ampliamente dominado por Google con su programa Adwords.
El lanzamiento de Kumo irá acompañado de una masiva campaña publicitaria en Internet, TV, radio y prensa, en la que Microsoft invertirá entre 80 y 100 millones de dólares, una cantidad enorme si se compara con los 50 millones que se suelen destinar a una campaña de alcance nacional, o a los 25 millones que Google se gastó en todo 2008 en publicidad.
Tal y como explica Adage, la campaña no mencionará expresamente a sus rivales en le sector de las búsquedas, sino que hará hincapié en la idea de que los buscadores no funcionan con la precisión que los usuarios desean, y no terminan de resolver sus problemas. Microsoft pondrá el énfasis en esta idea para intentar convencer a los internautas de que se pasen a su herramienta de búsqueda.
Por lo que se refiere a las prestaciones que se esperan de Bing, una de las novedades que introducirá será la de agrupar los resultados en categorías, para así facilitar la presentación de resultados y acortar el número de clics hasta dar con la información relevante.
Por ejemplo, si buscamos un modelo concreto de coche, Bing mostrará los resultados se mostrarán separados en concesionarios donde se vende el vehículo, componentes, ofertas de segunda mano, foros de discusión o vídeos.
Microsoft deja sin Messenger a Cuba
Posted on: 25 May 2009
Les comparto este artículo publicado en eluniversal.com.mx
La empresa fundada por Bill Gates decidió bloquear el servicio de Windows Live en los países con los que Estados Unidos mantiene un embargo comercial; Irán, Corea del Norte, Siria y Sudán también son afectados.
Microsoft, el gigante de la informática fundado por Bill Gates, ha decidido repentinamente cancelar su servicio de Messenger a los países con los que Estados Unidos mantiene un embargo comercial.
Entre los afectados se encuentran Cuba, Irán y Corea del Norte, quienes de manera abierta han manifestado su rechazo a las políticas estadounidenses. También se incluye a Siria y Sudán.
Al momento de intentar conectarse a esta popular herramienta de Windows, los cibernautas de estos países comenzaron a recibir el error 810003c1 que les impedía ponerse en línea en la red del Messenger.
«Microsoft ha cortado el Windows Live Messenger IM para los usuarios de países embargados por los Estados Unidos, por ello Microsoft no ofrecerá más el servicio de Windows Live en tu país», se lee en la página de soporte de Windows Live cuando se busca el citado error.
En seguida del mensaje se enlistan los países en los que este servicio fue bloqueado: Cuba, Siria, Irán, Sudán y Corea del Norte.
El embargo de EU contra Cuba es un bloqueo comercial, económico y financiero impuesto sobre la isla desde el 7 de febrero de 1962 por el presidente John F. Kennedy, aunque fue hasta 1992 cuando fue convertido en ley.
En el caso de Irán, la administración de Bill Clinton decretó en 1995 un embargo total en los negocios con el país árabe, terminando abruptamente con una relación comercial que había estado creciendo tras el fin de la guerra entre Irak e Irán.
Éste es un artículo escrito por Brian Morrissey @ adweek.com
NEW YORK Microsoft is continuing its attacks on Apple products as overpriced with a new Web campaign for its Zune portable media player.
In a Web video, financial planner and former reality show star Wes Moss presents the case that the 120GB iPod would cost $30,000 to fill with music buying songs at $1 each at the iTunes Store. «People worry about the capacity of their iPod,» Moss says in the 30-second spot. «What about the capacity of their bank account?»
The spot promotes Zune Pass, Microsoft’s music service that offers unlimited song downloads for $14.99 per month. «One costs a lot and one costs a little,» Moss says.
MDC Partners’ Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which won the Zune assignment last November to add to its work for Microsoft Windows Vista, did the campaign. Its earlier work, starring rapper Common, focused on turning PCs into «music discovery» machines.
Microsoft is running ads for the two-month campaign on sites like MySpace, Pandora, Gamefly and Hulu. It includes a YouTube channel with the Moss video. The campaign is Web only.
Microsoft introduced Zune Pass as part its effort to crack into the digital music market. The Zune player, which Microsoft introduced in November 2006 to compete with the wildly popular iPod, has failed to find much of an audience. According to financial filings, Microsoft sold just $85 million worth of Zunes in the most recent holiday quarter, a drop of more than 50 percent from the same period a year earlier
Digital music has remained mostly an a la carte business dominated by iTunes. Subscription services like Rhapsody and Napster haven’t been as popular. One thing not mentioned in the ads: thrifty iPod owners can’t use the Zune Pass subscription plan, which is only compatible with Zune.
The value message isn’t new for Microsoft. Crispin pushed a similar line of attack with its «It’s a PC» ads. Those show cash-strapped consumers choosing PCs over Macs after determining they can get more for their money with Microsoft alternatives. Those ads star real-life consumers.
For Zune, Microsoft has turned to Moss, a former contestant on The Apprentice (he was fired) who is a financial planner in Georgia, has his own personal finance radio show and appears on cable networks to comment on business matters.
Moss also stars at Zunepass.net, where visitors can use the sliders of a «Max’d calculator» to determine how much they’re spending at iTunes versus a Zunepass subscription.
Crispin plans to refresh the campaign with five new videos starring Moss.
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