Microsoft is doing its best to keep up with its advertising rivals, as the company has added new features into its internet display-advertising products to prevent users from jumping ship to Google and Facebook for their advertising needs.
Microsoft plans on unveiling tools and partnerships with AppNexus and MediaMath, to help its customers tailor ads more effectively and measure their impact. Microsoft currently uses Atlas, which is acquired from AQuantive for $6 billion dollars, to place ads on websites and help advertisers measure performance of campaigns.
Microsoft is trying to woo back customers after more and more advertisers are jumping ship to Facebook and Google. Microsoft had recently shifted its focus to search-related advertising.
Atlas is the direct competitor to Google’s DoubleClick, which Google purchased for $3.1 billion dollars. DoubleClick has currently surpassed Atlas in targeting capabilities, but Microsoft is hoping to change that.
“We’re investing more, and more intelligently, in display now. There has been this mumbling out there of, are we investing in display, and absolutely that is a major investment area for us,” Microsoft GM of Advertising and Atlas, Dennis Buchheim, stated.
Microsoft is also planning on adding new features that will allow the advertising customer to see a copy of an advertisement for their region and keep them from seeing that ad too many times. Microsoft is also working on making sure that a customer only sees the same ad in a series only once. The company also hopes to create a feature that utilizes Excel to manage media campaigns and allow for Atlas data to be managed in dashboards in SharePoint.
