The AdCenter Vision

I spent an hour or so this evening watching the video of the AdCenter presentation at the 2006 Strategic Account Summit. The video features Steve Balmer talking about the future of Search in the Microsoft World and was at pains to stress Microsofts desire to work with partners and it's commitment to what he called an ecosystem of partners. This is of course at odds with the strategy of both Yahoo and Google to market direct to the purchaser rather than work through agencies. If you dont already know, Ad Agencies used to make a good commission from both these companies up until fairly recently.

Balmer pressed home Microsofts commitment to "search" and spoke of the $1.1 Billion dollar annual R&D budget for AdCenter.

I guess the aim is to court the ad agency industry who feel a little let down by both Google and Yahoo. Balmer and Yousef Medi cited the technology investment as proof of thier support for the industry. Medi showed delegates (made up of members of the advertsising industry) the Ad Center lab site with it's plethora of tools that allow advertisers to gain better insights into the make up of site users.

The big question everyone is asking is will AdCenter ever become as big as Google and Microsoft will certainly have you believe the answer is a definate yes. Time will tell.

If you have an hour to kill, check out the video.

PS UK audiences wont be encouraged either by Balmers complete ignorance of who Robbie Williams was or Joanne Bradfords (MSN VP) insistance on calling a cricket bat a "cricket paddle"