As a company, Microsoft is one of the most respectable and is widely looked as the epitome in everything which is connected to Computers in some sense. It again proved its supremacy over Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc.’s You Tube when they struck a lucrative seven figure advertising deal with Discovery Communications Inc. This deal would the first of its kind for Microsoft as they would be now working on the advertising campaign which would be targeted at Internet, mobiles and video games.
The fifth season of the famous crab-fishing documentary “Deadliest Catch” on Discovery Channel will be now promoted by Microsoft with a completely new and innovative set of ideas. Microsoft will put up their ads on MSN and their mobile pages with a 90 percent ad space on MSNBC and Fox Sports sites. In addition to it, the company also has plans to run sweepstakes in video-games like “Shaun White Snowboarding” and send text- message alerts to phones for details about the show.
Appreciating Microsoft’s preparedness for the deal, Donna Murphy, the Discovery Channel’s VP of marketing strategy said, “Microsoft just came in like rock stars on this. They were the first ones to really blow it out in every direction“. For sure, it is a very important victory for Microsoft as the online advertisement sector is ruled by Google. According to Sanford C Bernstein & Co, “Sales of display ads in an online ad market expected to post the slowest annual growth since 2001. Microsoft and Yahoo are fighting for a display market that will only grow 1.5 per cent this year, compared with 37 per cent in 2007“. The key to Microsoft’s success was different teams handling different websites which gave the company a multi dimensional approach and strategy to go ahead in the deal. “We never would have had such a diversified campaign“, is what Keith Lorizio, a VP in Microsoft’s Ad Sales Group had to say.
But, the situation doesn’t actually look so hunky dory for Microsoft.
With recessionary pressures and stats indicating that Display — including banners and animated ads — will account for a quarter of global Web-ad revenue this year and grow 1.5 percent; there is a big scope for improvement. Will this deal be of any substantial help to Microsoft? Yes, sure it will. Time has the answer to quantify the help. Things were not the same in the boom years in online advertising when the biggies such as Yahoo & Microsoft had campaigns up and running. Companies nowadays have grown used to an industry expanding more than 20 percent a year to fight for a place.
Microsoft also faces distraction from Yahoo as its failed bid to acquire Yahoo would be looming largely on their head. Accusations such as, “Microsoft’s ability to come to us with interesting ideas just went by the wayside“; by David Kenny of Yahoo have to be proved wrong too. There are some technical software issues at Microsoft too. The company does not have a targeting feature which explains some highly online technical strategies and Lorizio himself claims that Microsoft is “catching up”.
Let’s hope that Discovery gives Microsoft both money, fame and its lost reputation in the market through this lucrative deal.
