Microsoft Buys Important Share of Facebook
Oct 30, 2007 Microsoft adCenter
Microsoft has made some serious strides in an effort to win back confidence in their advertising programs, most notably Microsoft adCenter. In recent months I’ve mentioned that adCenter traffic accounts for a mere 1% of the total traffic across all of my managed pay-per-click campaigns. Whenever news breaks that Microsoft has secured more ad real-estate, it’s cause to celebrate. Their most recent acquisition of a share of Facebook is exciting because this could turn the tide for Gates’ baby.
There’s good reason Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft have all taken a close hard look at Zuckerberg’s social networking behemoth that is Facebook. With over 44 million loyal (and often sleepless) members, Facebook is ripe for the picking when it comes to advertising. Granted, in the past Facebook has attempted to slowly introduce their own advertising into the ‘Home’ screen, through Facebook Fliers, and through Facebook Marketplace, but nothing to tap outside resources.
Enter Microsoft.
Microsoft made a smart move here. Much of their recent promotion and development of adCenter has lent it considerable viability as a competitor in the pay-per-click market. Many of the features Microsoft developed go hand-in-hand with Facebook:
- Demographics targeting, could be implemented quite easily on Facebook
- Advanced geo-targeting is made easy on Facebook through “Networks” and “Home Town”
- Facebook databases would make external targeting much more intuitive - in the past Microsoft has made assumptions on age and sex demographics versus behavior due to a finite pool of user data
- Facebook membership completes the puzzle, they needed this badly.
Of course, any formal announcement is likely to be put off for a while, but don’t be surprised to see a beta available in Q1 of 2008, if Microsoft is smart.
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