James Cherkoff, who was in Paris with me earlier this week, has a really good write-up on Microsoft deciding to seriously enter the advertising game.
So what’s the good news you may well be asking?
Well, Microsoft may be about to radically step up their aspirations in the world of advertising, but they have decided to play nice. They think that they their best chance of slicing off a large piece of the advertising pie – and preventing the whole market being run by Google – is to co-operate with the advertising industry not try and vaporise it. Ballmer and co have decided they need the people who understand the more subjective part of the marketing equation, otherwise known as branding, which even the most powerful algorithms can’t get their processors around. Yet.
[Just added this post to the Blue Monster series.]
