Microsoft Promotes Joanne Bradford, Moves Bigger into Advertising
Discussed in this post: Microsoft, Joanne Bradford, online ad shortage, MSFT v GOOG.
Microsoft announced yesterday that it would promote Joanne Bradford to head the freshly minted global online ad sales unit. Joanne has done great things with MSN, making it extremely advertiser-friendly and forward thinking. She's a natural choice and definitely an asset to the company...
...as they expand into some brave new territory. The AdAge article clearly pits Microsoft against Google in this space. Did everyone catch Gates' comments around the time of CES? He gently referred to Google as being "good at search": the underlying idea is that his company is a whole heckuva a lot more. He's right of course, and there are a lot areas where advertising is going to fit very cleanly into the experience (such as XBOX and the Media Player stuff).
So, if we've (supposedly) got an online inventory shortage, Microsoft could potentially open the floodgates. Plus, under the mantle of AdCenter, advertisers could conceivably manage many different campaigns under one log-in. Pretty powerful stuff.
Google? Google is in heavy growth mode, of course. But will they be willing to add services that truly take them past their current offerings, so that they can more powerfully compete? What could we see? A Google Media Player? A GBOX game system? GOOGNBC cable channel?
As long as demand remains high (and it certainly will), I imagine the company best able to provide good inventory in a way that is easily managed is in a good position. That's a lot of where the battle is going to be fought.
Microsoft announced yesterday that it would promote Joanne Bradford to head the freshly minted global online ad sales unit. Joanne has done great things with MSN, making it extremely advertiser-friendly and forward thinking. She's a natural choice and definitely an asset to the company...
...as they expand into some brave new territory. The AdAge article clearly pits Microsoft against Google in this space. Did everyone catch Gates' comments around the time of CES? He gently referred to Google as being "good at search": the underlying idea is that his company is a whole heckuva a lot more. He's right of course, and there are a lot areas where advertising is going to fit very cleanly into the experience (such as XBOX and the Media Player stuff).
So, if we've (supposedly) got an online inventory shortage, Microsoft could potentially open the floodgates. Plus, under the mantle of AdCenter, advertisers could conceivably manage many different campaigns under one log-in. Pretty powerful stuff.
Google? Google is in heavy growth mode, of course. But will they be willing to add services that truly take them past their current offerings, so that they can more powerfully compete? What could we see? A Google Media Player? A GBOX game system? GOOGNBC cable channel?
As long as demand remains high (and it certainly will), I imagine the company best able to provide good inventory in a way that is easily managed is in a good position. That's a lot of where the battle is going to be fought.
posted by Gary Stein at 6:24 AM
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