Byron Acohido
USA Today
SEATTLE — Look out Google and Yahoo, Microsoft is getting very serious about search.
The software giant rented Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, Thursday night to fete 700 online advertisers. The party capped two days of hard-sell pitches, including celebrity testimonials from hip-hop impresario Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and British advertising mogul Martin Sorrell.
The pitch: Buy more MSN Search ads. Yet Microsoft’s search engine drives just 13.2% of online searches, trailing Yahoo’s 28% and Google’s 43%, according to ComScore Media Metrix. What MSN Search lacks in eyeballs, it intends to make up in cool tech tools — and an ambitious strategy to extend search and search ads into free e-mail, instant messaging and online video games.
“It’s a pretty holistic strategy,” says Kevin Lee, chairman of search marketing firm Did-it. “They understand all those locations can stimulate new search activity.”
The company officially launched AdCenter, a system that lets advertisers bid to have their ads displayed alongside search results. AdCenter is modeled after Google’s highly successful AdSense and a similar system used by Yahoo.
Microsoft knows it has to do more than merely match its rivals. So it has dispatched hundreds of researchers to redefine search and online advertising. One project seeks to give PC users the ability to click on an image of a celebrity’s dress and get whisked to a website that sells the dress.
Other projects are investigating ways to deliver extensive demographic profiles to online advertisers.
“Search is truly in its infancy, and we have so many plans to innovate for consumers and advertisers,” says Karen Redetzki, an MSN product manager.
Microsoft is loath to let Google and Yahoo dominate an online advertising market that Forrester Research projects will grow from $11.9 billion this year to $18.9 billion by 2010.
As that market gels, and as online advertising prices rise, “Then some of the neat things that Microsoft is in a unique position to offer may make a difference,” says Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Watch.
Still, scores of past Microsoft initiatives to diversify have fizzled. And getting consumers and advertisers to break their Google and Yahoo habits won’t be easy.
“Why switch if what you’re currently using isn’t broken?” says tech reviewer Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome. “I’m not going to switch to another advertising network unless I know my returns will be greater than what they currently are.”
