Tag Archives: microsoft

Microsoft partners with Nielsen’s NeuroFocus to pin-point consumer behaviour

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Microsoft has partnered with Nielson to analyse consumers’ reactions to Windows 8 in-app ads and increase engagement with brands.

The research uses Nielsen’s NeuroFocus testing to measure brain impulses subconscious consumer reactions to Windows 8 in-app ads can be gauged.

Matt James, managing director, Mi9 Media explains, “Given that ads in apps for Windows 8 are new to market, we are committed to testing and learning what is working in the early stages of development to continually evolve and improve the Windows 8 experience.”

“Our priority is to put the consumer’s needs and motivations at the heart of every ad experience we deliver in Australia. Central to this is going beyond tracking what people do and discovering the actions driving their behaviour.

“It’s pretty exciting to move beyond just asking people what they think of an ad. We can now monitor actual emotional responses and see what a person really feels about the content they see and whether it will increase their propensity to buy something.”

Microsoft claims initial results showed brands which advertised in Windows 8 apps experience a ‘halo effect’ and consumers exposed to ads in apps also shifted their perceptions and became more familiar with the advertised brand.

Further details of the Windows 8 in-app ad studies will be released at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity later this month.

“Ads that are intrusive, lack authenticity or just plain bland are not going to make consumers feel closer to or better about a brand. The unique design of Windows 8 allows for an immersive app experience and develops a connection with the consumer, serving to increase their engagement and loyalty long-term. We’re looking forward to using the results of this project to improve the consumer’s advertising experience,” James says.

Xbox to prevent people skipping ad breaks

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Microsoft has filed a patent application that proposes the Xbox One be configured to track the behaviour of viewers via the Kinect camera, in order to be able to reward viewers for watching ads during a TV show or movie and prevent them from skipping ad breaks.

The ‘virtual rewards’ could include giving an avatar away to the viewer and giving away coupons for an advertised product or service. The Xbox One console is due to launch this year and was unveiled last week at a high-profile event at the company’s headquarters in Washington.

Microsoft said it has applied for the patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office last week and stated in the application: “Television viewing tends to be a passive experience for a viewer, without many opportunities for the viewer to engage or have interactive experiences with the presented content. To increase interactive viewing and encourage a user to watch one or more particular items of video content, awards and achievements may be tied to those items of video content. Producers, distributors and advertisers of the video content may set viewing goals and award a viewer who has reached the goals. By providing content viewing goals and awarding the viewer for reaching the goals, the present disclosure provides for an interactive television viewing experience. Additionally, by tying the awards and achievements to particular items of video or advertising content, viewers may be encouraged to increase their viewership of the content, thus increasing advertising opportunities.”

Image via Barone Firenze / Shutterstock.com

 

Bing Ads to take fight to Google in Australia

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Mi9 has announced the introduction of Bing Ads to the Australian market, bringing renewed investment in the challenger to Google’s dominant platform and opening up cross-border opportunities for Australian search marketers.

Control of the development and monetisation of Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, will move to Mi9, the local joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co, in July.

Currently, advertising on the Bing platform was offered through the ‘Panama’ platform run out of Yahoo Search Marketing. But a global decision in 2010 by (then) Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz to focus on its core strength meant getting out of the search business.

As Microsoft’s local venture, Mi9 is attempting to capitalise on the still-fast-growing search advertising market.

It’s about taking the fight to Google, says Steve Sirich, global head of Bing advertising at Microsoft. “For marketers, it’s about giving them a choice. We believe innovation is a function of that choice. We continue to innovate and provide differentiation with our Bing web search experience.”

Part of the move will see 12 specialists hired within the Mi9 team in sales, operations and product.

Sirich says the most noticeable difference for search marketers will be in the selling channel, with a centralised sales team bringing efficiencies. “The account managers that now represent the Mi9 digital suite will additionally represent the Bing product, so it’s a nice audience extension, especially to the performance products.”

The move also opens up cross-border opportunities, both ways, for Australian and international search marketing campaigns, Sirich says, an aspect Yahoo!7 didn’t push aggressively. “It opens up markets that Australian advertisers can now purchase that traffic in.

“So if advertisers do have an interest to purchase US traffic or UK traffic or India traffic… they’ll now have that ability.”

On the functionality of the platform, Sirich says Bing Ads will function in a similar way to Google’s product. “It is to our advantage the advertising product operates in a similar way to Google Adwords,” he says.

Roland Irwin of advertising platform Marin Software says he’s welcoming of the move, saying that increased competition will be good for the market.

With Bing’s reported 5.5 million monthly unique users in Australia and global numbers suggesting 20% are unique to Bing, that means approximately one million Australian Bing users do not use Google. “They have a unique audience so there are opportunities there,” Irwin says.

“Australian advertisers are not as acquainted with Bing due to less interaction with it compared to Google so will experience a learning curve initially,” he adds. But softening that learning curve are two things. First, the similarities between the systems means platforms such as Marin’s can be updated to incorporate both. Second, Google’s block on copying search campaigns from its platform has now been lifted, making it easier for marketers to duplicate campaigns across both platforms.

The launch of Bing Ads was announced this week and will come into effect in July.

 

Adobe, Apple, Microsoft subpoenaed by Australian Government over pricing questions

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The Australian Government’s IT Pricing Inquiry has ramped up its investigation into the so-called ‘Australia Tax’ today by issuing subpoenas to Apple, Adobe and Microsoft to appear in court next month for questioning on why some prices are higher in Australia compared to other markets.

The legal summonses, as reported by Gizmodo Australia, call the three companies to appear before the House Committee on 22 March to address concerns over hiked prices on IT goods that have been sold locally.

Federal Member for Chifley, Ed Husic, told Gizmodo Australia today that he is disappointed with the lengths the committee had to go to, in getting the companies to cooperate with the inquiry.

“In what’s probably the first time anywhere in the world, these IT firms are now being called by the Australian Parliament to explain why they price their products so much higher in Australia compared to the US,” Husic told Gizmodo Australia.

“Adobe, Apple and Microsoft are just a few firms that have continually defied the public’s call for answers and refused to appear before the IT Pricing Inquiry.”

Prior to the Government-issued subpoenas, Apple met with federal politicians in Canberra in July last year, after been granted a closed-door hearing in the parliamentary inquiry, with US representatives for the computer giant arguing its case.

In addition, Microsoft provided a three-page public submission that questioned the inquiry’s comparison of technology prices locally and abroad, saying: “Any such comparisons are of limited use, as prices differ from country to country and across channels due to a range of factors.”

Now it seems any previous attempts to resolve the matter will have to wait until the hearing next month. If Apple, Adobe or Microsoft fail to appear in court on the set date, they will face further legal action. Currently, it is not know whether other tech companies have been ordered to take part in the inquiry.

 

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Apple loses ground in tablet market, Microsoft Surface expected to struggle

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Apple has seen its tablet market share decline during the third quarter of the year to Google Android rivals.

The iPad maker has seen its share in the tablet market drop 15.1% to 50.4%, according to IDC. The charge of Android tablets was led by Samsung and Amazon with the former shipping 5.1 million tablets during the quarter.

Although Apple saw a drop in its market share, IDC puts this down, in part, to consumers waiting for new versions of the iPad including the highly anticipated iPad mini.

Tom Mainelli, research director of tablets at IDC says, “We believe a sizeable percentage of consumers interested in buying an Apple tablet sat out the third quarter in anticipation of an announcement about the new iPad mini. Now that the new mini, and a fourth-generation full-sized iPad, are both shipping we expect Apple to have a very good quarter.”

The tablet market grew 49.5% year on year, with the top five non-Apple vendors all seeing an increase in shipments. Samsung saw 325% growth to end the quarter with a 18.4% share of the market, while Asus, which makes the Google Nexus 7, saw a growth of 243%.

“However, we believe the mini’s relatively high $329 (AU$369) starting price leaves plenty of room for Android vendors to build upon the success they achieved in the third quarter.” Mainelli adds.

IDC expects the tablet market to heat up with the recent introduction of a number of Windows 8, such as the much hyped Surface, giving consumers a third viable tablet platform from which to choose. However, with price points critical in tablets, the analyst predicts Microsoft and its partners will have a tough time winning a share of consumer wallet with price points starting at $500.

 

With Macworld.

Rio Tinto, Google, Microsoft and Qantas top employer brands in Aus

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Rio Tinto, Google, Microsoft and Qantas are among the most attractive Australian employer brands, according to a study from LinkedIn.

The professional social network today revealed the results of its ‘InDemand Employer’, finding Rio Tinto was the most attractive and sought after Australian employer on LinkedIn based on the level of interest users of the social network showed in the company online.

Top 20 attractive Australian employer brandsGoogle ranked at number two, while Microsoft, at number five, and HP, at number 11 were the only other technology companies to rank in the top 20. Management consultants Accenture also featured in the top ten, coming in at number six, while its rival Deloitte ranked at number 18.

Two banks made the list – National Australia Bank at number 10 and the Commonwealth Bank at number 15. Iconic Australian brand Qantas rated a mention at number eight, despite last year’s industrial disputes. The ABC was the only media company to make the top 20, at number 13.

“70% of companies rank employer branding as one of their biggest priorities as they increasingly compete for top talent,” says senior director of LinkedIn’s talent solutions, Steve Barham. “The ability to better understand how your company is perceived among key professional audiences empowers you to take steps to better engage the professionals you most want to hire.”

InDemand Employers is powered by LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Index tool, a new, free service that allows companies to measure and benchmark the strength of their employer brand. LinkedIn offers the following three tips for boosting one’s rating on the talent index:

  1. Encourage all current employees to create and complete their profiles so that they can easily be found,
  2. complete their company page so potential candidates can find out more information about the company and its culture, and
  3. include a company ‘follow’ button on the company website and in email signatures.

 

Microsoft: LinkedIn as important for content as company website

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To Microsoft, LinkedIn is as important a content marketing tool as its own website, technical evangelism lead at the technology firm, Sarah Vaughan, revealed yesterday.

Speaking at a roundtable event alongside LinkedIn’s co-founder Allen Blue, regional managing director Cliff Rosenberg and APAC senior director of marketing solutions Olivier Legrand, Vaughan said the platform provides a means to make Microsoft, a brand that touches so many audiences, relevant to individuals.

“Our LinkedIn group [created to target developers] gives us a way to make our brand real for a very specific subset of our audience… we can engage in a way deliberately about them more than the big Microsoft which is about everything to everybody,” Vaughan said.

With many B2B marketers still feeling their way on LinkedIn, the business social network highlighted its high penetration among Australian professionals – 65% have created a profile – and pointed to its analytics and targeting capabilities.

According to Legrand, 32% of APAC LinkedIn members follow company pages and a further 41% indicate interest in doing so in the future. There is an expectation from members on LinkedIn to be approached by brands and to have conversations with them, he said, with inclusion in a community of like-minded professionals and keeping up with company updates the most common reasons for following a brand.

The most common questions LinkedIn gets from marketers are around how put a strategy in place using its framework. The winning strategy, Legrand said, is one that leverages the synergies of the network’s push-based methods – display ads, content ads, inbox messages and polls – and pull approaches – groups and company pages.

“There are two layers to it,” Legrand said. “The ‘always on’ strategy and how do I manage regular engagement, which is really the pull part, and then how do I plug into this always on strategy with tactical campaigns for product launches or seasonality.”

“The winning strategy is a combination of both – leveraging the ability to keep the engagement and the conversation going, and extract business intelligence from it, and the ability to attract and present the right audience with the right product at the right time.”

Vaughan added that the pull part is the foundation, required to create a value exchange that gives the brand permission to contact users with push messages.

Microsoft found the developers group it set up successful by making the group all about developers, instead of all about Microsoft, and adding value to the group’s members with the brand in the background.

The success of an email push campaign executed by the company was boosted dramatically by sending it from a respected team member as opposed to directly from the organisation. “Receiving a message from an entity or a company versus receiving a message from someone makes a huge difference,” Legrand noted. “When there is an individual behind the message it is much more human – the connection and the advocacy you can build is greater.”

Talking about future plans for the social network, Blue added that the aim is to build a content product that will have a focussed experience around specific industries or around companies, to provide professionals with the information they need. In the future it is envisaged the service will be used to help decide who it is best to do business with, whether that be finding a social media agency with the right experience or getting feedback on what the best hosting provider is.

The network also expects to head in a similar direction as Facebook in terms of mobile usage, with 22% of its traffic already coming through its mobile app.

 

Microsoft hits back at Kogan, blacklisting the site from search results

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Microsoft has hit back at Kogan over its ‘Internet Explorer 7 tax’ stunt of last month, according to the outspoken boss of the online retailer, removing it from Bing’s search results.

Kogan punished users of IE7, imposing a tax of 6.8% on transactions made via what it described as an “antiquated” and “obsolete” browser. The tax added 0.1% for every month since IE7 was released, to recoup the cost of optimising the company’s website for the browser.

In a blog post, CEO and founder Ruslan Kogan wrote that the tax was not an attack on Microsoft, but rather a simple encouragement for people to upgrade their browsers. “We never waged war against Microsoft over IE7, we simply wanted people to upgrade their web browsers – we even mentioned many times in the media how the latest versions of Internet Explorer comply with the latest web standards and are suitable browsers,” he wrote.

“We were baffled and shocked to learn that in the aftermath of introducing the IE7 tax, our website stopped appearing in search results in Bing, Yahoo and other search engines in the Microsoft Network.

“We hope Microsoft were not too offended by what we did with the IE7 tax and this is just a temporary glitch.”

A quick Bing search will deliver search results for Kogan’s Wikipedia page, Facebook and Twitter, but the official Kogan.com is nowhere to be seen.

Microsoft shells out $1.2b to acquire Yammer

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Microsoft is to acquire business social networking solution Yammer for $1.2 billion, and is likely to incorporate the solution into Microsoft Office and its other enterprise programs.

Microsoft, which also recently acquired Skype, appears set to make business sharing an easier proposition, hinting at plans to integrate Yammer’s technology with Office, Sharepoint, Dynamics (its CRM tool) and Skype.

Announcing the acquisition, Microsoft says it will maintain Yammer as a separate business unit, while integrating it with its own offer. “Yammer will continue to develop its standalone service and maintain its commitment to simplicity, innovation and cross-platform experiences,” the statement reads. “Moving forward, Microsoft plans to accelerate Yammer’s adoption alongside complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype.”

Launched in 2008, Yammer now has more than five million corporate users, including employees at 85% of the Fortune 500. The service allows employees to join a secure, private social network for free and is often used as a knowledge sharing and team building platform.

“The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love,” says Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft. “Yammer adds a best-in-class enterprise social networking service to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services.”

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.

Microsoft was rumoured to be working on its own Yammer competitor, known as OfficeTalk, but that now appears on the back burner according to a case study posted last week which indicate it’s now nothing more than a Microsoft IT demo project.

Microsoft launches social network called ‘So.cl’

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‘So.cl’, pronounced ‘social’, is a new social network launched publicly by Microsoft over the weekend, targeted at students and not positioned to take on Facebook.

The new network was launched quietly, in the shadow of Facebook’s IPO, with the aim of creating a new research experience for students to network with peers and share information. It combines social networks and research, aggregates web content and encourages collaboration through video ‘parties’ similar to Google Hangouts.

Developed by Microsoft’s research arm, FUSE Labs, it’s being referred to as “an experiment in open search,” and makes searches viewable to other So.cl users and third parties, tying in with the recent launch of Bing’s social search tools.

Users can log in to the network with their Facebook or Windows Live accounts. Once logged in, they’re presented with a list of suggested topics to follow, which are then added to a ‘feed’ section, similar to the newsfeeds on Facebook and Google+. The feed displays other So.cl users’ searches — which are powered by Bing — listing the search term the person used and the website it took them to in real time. Within each post, users can leave a comment, share someone else’s search, or add additional links and feedback to a thread, a feature Microsoft calls ‘riffing’. The hope is that by seeing first-hand what others are searching for, So.cl users can access new information more easily.

The service also comes with a bookmarklet feature that adds a ‘Share on So.cl’ button to users’ browser toolbars, similar to Pinterest’s ‘pin it’ button, allowing users to share interesting websites.

The service first launched a trial five months ago among students of selected universities in the US, following a similar launch path to Facebook. While it is not designed to compete directly with other social networks, it is likely to be up against similar services for share of time people are willing to spend on social networking.

With fewer features than Facebook and Google+, principal analyst at Ovum, Eden Zoller, says the service adds little value beyond social search and sharing of information.

“Microsoft So.cl is not a fully-fledged social network and it is far too early to even suggest it could be a rival to Google+ or Facebook, and the chances are it never will be,” Zoller says.

So.cl screenshot jpg

ninemsn launches Mi9 trade brand, details

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The ninemsn joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co has today revealed details of its new corporate and trade brand, Mi9, which spans publishing, advertising, data, gaming consoles, and an integrated production house.

Announced in November last year, the ‘M’ and the ’9′ in the brand name should obvious, but the ‘i’ stands for imagination and intelligence, says CEO Mark Britt.

“We’re extending our reach with our ad network, leading the market shift to programmatic trading, making a big bet on data and driving brand experiences onto new properties like Xbox. Mi9 is the articulation of our evolved digital offering,” says Britt.

The brand is broken up into three branches: Mi9 Media, Mi9 Data and Technology and Mi9 Ventures.

Todays announcement included that of the appointment of former Starcom UK managing director Matt James to the role of MD of Mi9 Media, which comprises all commercial functions:

  • Mi9 Advertising: selling Mi9 owned and operated premium sites, where context is important to advertisers,
  • Microsoft Media Network: represents Mi9’s third party advertising network and performance products,
  • Microsoft Advertising Exchange: launched in Australia last year, a real-time bidding marketplace that allows advertisers to bid on premium online inventory on an individual impression basis,
  • Mi9 Studios: previously NinePixels, Mi9’s creative design and development team, with an expanded offering focused on branded content and online video production, and
  • Mi9 Insights: focused on providing research into consumer behaviour online and translating that into actionable insights for advertisers.

The second arm of the brand, Mi9 Data and Technology, will be led by chief data and technology officer Richard McLaren, and has created the Mi9 Data Engine, which is intended to help marketers reach their audiences efficiently than ‘off-the-shelf’ segmentation.

Mi9 Ventures incorporates investments including Cudo, iSelect and Rate City.

The launch today comes less than a week after Britt called on Australian premium publishers to join the ‘private’ Microsoft Advertising Exchange and ally against the ‘Death Star’ that is Google’s ‘public’ DoubleClick ad exchange, open to advertisers and publishers of all shapes and sizes.