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."

You Can Keep Your adCenter

[eldavojohn]

Search isn't the only place where adCenter will place advertising. In the future, Microsoft said, it expects to launch ads in e-mail, the Spaces blogging program, on mobile applications, in Office and on the Xbox.com Web site.

That's wonderful! If there's one thing I enjoy about watching television, it's when my favorite program cuts to commercials and there's a guy with an annoying voice repeating everything. Damn, I just get elated at the prospect of someone soliciting products & services to me non-stop.

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 ... great , it really is.

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.

Microsoft & Yahoo

[XxtraLarGe]

For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship."

I'm sure this is meant as a bargaining chip. "See what you have to lose if you don't go with us, Yahoo?"

Non-IE Customers Not Wanted

[Bill Dimm]

If I actually wanted to run an ad with this service, I would go to adcenter.msn.com [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.

Microsoft's size is it's biggest asset...

[Weaselmancer]

...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?

Stock manipulation anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

...For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship...

Could it be that someone wanted to manipulate the stock of either Microsoft or Yahoo. If this has been rolled out in two counries, and a 6000 customer pilot program, Somebody has to have known about it before today's news. It's completely obvious if Microsoft is going to compete directly with Yahoo's cash cow, their bread and butter, their /* new aphorism goes here */ Then the probability of Microsoft buying Yahoo is like the probability of catching Michael Jackson dating a 35 year old woman.

For anyone that doesn't know it already...don't use slashdot to pick stocks

Mixed Feelings

[MOtisBeard]

Wow, I have such incredibly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I have loathed Microsoft and Bill Gates ever since that angry letter he wrote calling people thieves for sharing copies of his BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. On the other hand, the world of advertisement brokers is bursting at the seams with companies that can't even be trusted as far as you can trust Microsoft (let's face it, you can't *really* trust Microsoft, but you can trust them to be Microsoft, to be there tomorrow, and to adhere to some degree to their own Terms of Service). Google AdSense needs some real competition... they turned down our torrent site simply because it's a torrent site, in spite of the lack of pr0n, the DMCA compliance statement, and the fact that most of our torrents are public domain or otherwise of no interest to MPAA.

Is this going to give me a reason to choose Microsoft for something over Google??? The mind boggles.

Information

[kratei]

"AdCenter will give advertisers sophisticated information about consumers, including their location, age, gender and sometimes, their level of wealth. That's more than what Google and Yahoo! offer, said Joe Doran, senior director for monetization in Microsoft's MSN ad-planning group."

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 driving YHOO price down

[192939495969798999]

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.

privacy invasive

[Bert690]

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.

MSFT & YHOO - misinterpretation

[DamienMcKenna]

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

Return to the 90's

[diegocgteleline.es]

Ads seem to work for TV but duh, weren't ads who were financiating all those .com bubbles before they bankrupted?

The whole HOSTS file thing...

[HTL2001]

Well I guess they do plan ahead... seeing as how you cannot block anything from microsoft in the hosts file as its hardcoded