14 DAY TRIAL // Responding to Microsoft's $44.6 billion unsolicited acquisition proposal for Yahoo, Google accused the Redmond company of aiming to kill competitiveness, innovation and openness on the Internet, via the takeover of the Sunnyvale Internet giant. Microsoft retorted that Google only looked to protect its established and growing monopoly on the search and online advertising markets. And in a move designed to prove that it is at least a potential powerhouse, as far as web search and advertising are concerned, Microsoft announced that its adCenter Labs would unveil digital advertising innovations at the fourth annual Demo Fest.
With the events triggered by the Yahoo bid in the background, Microsoft Chief Executive officer, Steve Ballmer, did emphasize that the company needed to focus on the matters at hand and only deal with the Sunnyvale giant when the time would be right. And since, Yahoo or no Yahoo, Microsoft is committed to advertise its way to Google, the collection of next-generation digital advertising technologies showcased at Demo Fest, courtesy of the Microsoft adCenter Labs, might just do the trick.
A total of seven demos were presented, delivering a sneak peek into the evolution of the advertising technology and algorithms focused on content analysis and computer vision, covering various forms of content from video to images, and from speech recognition to contextual video ads. On top of this, the demos also delivered examples of advanced marketing intelligence, resulting in booted audience insight and enhanced targeting capabilities, both of which would serve advertisers.
"We believe the technical advances and intelligence we are creating at adCenter Labs can change the game of online advertising," said Tarek Najm, technical fellow at Microsoft. "Solutions to today's challenges must be capable of handling and understanding the complexity of vast amounts of data. To address that challenge, we are developing advertising algorithms that can anticipate and understand consumer behavior faster than the speed of thought, so that we can help advertisers create more efficient and relevant user experiences."
Microsoft's demos featured Air Wave (interactive, multitouch screen displays for public ads); Contextual Ads for Video (dynamic ads tailored to video content); Intelligent Bug Ads (an algorithm that serves ads in nonintrusive frames in a video); Visual Product Browsing (a tool designed to use computer vision algorithms to browse and categorize images as a human might); Content Analysis Engine (the automatic extraction and categorizing of information from search queries and Web page contents); Content Detection in Sub-documents (technology that identifies sensitive or unsuitable content) and the Ad Research Dashboard, the evolution of the Keyword Services Platform.
"The ultimate marketing objective is to find a sweet spot where you connect with a consumer on their terms," said Jeffrey Pruitt, executive vice president of Corporate Partnerships for iCrossing and president of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). "The insights and research that are coming out of Microsoft's adCenter Labs help provide agencies and advertisers with smarter, more relevant online advertising technologies and tools to make informed decisions on those connection points."