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Microsoft testing advertising across Live services
Posted on March 15, 2006

Microsoft has announced advertising will be added to a variety of their Live products, including Microsoft Office Live, Windows Live Mail and most notably, MSN Spaces. Office Live display ads are initially being tested in the U.S. and immediately sold out of their available openings for beta advertisers.

Windows Live Mail display ads are being tested in various markets across the world including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Windows Live display ads are currently being tested in MSN Spaces in Australia and Italy.

Coca-Cola Brazil, JCPenney and Monster Worldwide are among the 20 global marketers participating in the initial ad tests. The results of the multiple ad formats being tested will help determine which ad offerings provide the best return on investment for marketers.

Additional research is underway with approximately 100 advertisers in nine markets to verify advertisers' needs and best practice advertising solutions for Windows Live.

Microsoft will continue to invest heavily in MSN.com, as well as continue to explore new advertising opportunities on Live.com, OfficeLive.com, Microsoft.com, the Xbox Live service, Internet Protocol television (IPTV), mobile devices and other Microsoft properties, the company says.

This effort will help generate revenue to provide consumers with a wide array of free and low-cost online services such as Web hosting, e-mail and Web services, says Microsoft.

"Advertising is a very important business model for Microsoft worldwide because an increasing number of advertisers are becoming more global," said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president for Global Sales and Marketing at Microsoft. "With ad-supported software opportunities, we're able to offer great services at low or no cost for our consumers and a vast ecosystem for advertisers."

Adding advertising to MSN spaces is an interesting decision, especially when competitive services such as Blogger are not only ad-free, but provide tools for bloggers to earn revenue through easy implementation of Google AdSense.

Microsoft Office Live offerings range from free domain name, Web site and company e-mail accounts that are advertising-supported to more comprehensive services available on a subscription-fee basis.

Microsoft Office Live Basics, Microsoft Office Live Essentials and Microsoft Office Live Collaboration are being offered free of charge to customers during the beta program.

Customers interested in participating in the beta program are invited to register online at www.officelive.com. Microsoft expects to release final public versions of all three Microsoft Office Live services in late 2006. The beta program is currently only available to U.S. businesses.
SOURCE: Microsoft Corporation; Search Engine Watch