Microsoft Mobile PPC Ads – Not In This Quarter
1st February 2008
A reliable internal source at Microsoft adCenter has revealed that they are currently working hard with the ScreenTonic group to roll out a mobile advertising offering in the near future. It will not, however, be anytime within the quarter.
Microsoft acquired mobile advertising firm ScreenTonic in May 2007. The motivations behind the move were obvious – Microsoft intends to be fully armed for the next battle for dominance against Google – on the mobile space. However, the lack of any visible offering for such a long period of time has been disappointing to say the least.
This latest bit of information is a sign that they at least intend to fight the fight and not just give up and walk away from the mobile search advertising market. Delays in entering the space and making quick decisive moves will hurt them though.
Now would be the right time for Microsoft to capitalise on the souring relations between Google and the operators and form partnerships with the operators, allowing them to provide a superior advertiser experience compared to the Google AdWords system, which has recently been found to lack some fundamental tracking features on mobile.
Update:
Thank you to prdo for pointing out (indirectly) that the title of this post is slightly misleading. We’ve modified it to clarify that the PPC ads are not available on MSN Mobile, though display advertising is.
Tags: ad, advertising, microsoft, mobile, mobile-marketing, ppc, screentonic
5 Responses to “Microsoft Mobile PPC Ads – Not In This Quarter”
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MSN has been serving mobile ads in the US since December of last year (mobilestance.com/2007/12/10/microsoft-opens-up-us-advertising-inventory-on-msn/)
It isn’t clear if they are using their Screentonic mobile ad server or if they are simply serving the display ads out of their Accipiter / Atlas platform.
They’re probably just using some half-baked solution as an interim measure till their main mobile product gets ready. The European market won’t wait round for them forever, though!
Your post is wrong – there are ads on their MSN mobile site for more than a month now. Check http://www.msn.co.uk from your mobile or go to http://mobile.uk.msn.com/device/default.aspx.
Better check your sources or do better homework next time….
Prdo, our source was a Microsoft adCenter representative. Perhaps you know something about Microsoft’s plans with mobile PPC ads on adCenter that she wasn’t preview to? Care to share your information on here?
The ads on the MSN Mobile portal do not come via the PPC ad platform (adCenter) and are not search driven.
Though I do take your point on board and have updated the post to clarify that we’re talking about PPC / Search ads on mobile.
Microsoft is expanding its Adcenter. Hopefully it gets released soon, there are just too many rules to google adsense, it needs a competitor to make them stop being a bully.