It’s About Advertising, Stupid
Yes, I recognize that my posts have become infrequent, and I need to do something about it — other than report on my concert-going… although I should mention that I was able to catch the Arctic Monkeys show at the Paramount last weekend, and it was fantastic. No pics to share, alas. My phone photos are always crap, so I didn’t even bother this time around. Maybe I’ll grab a shot from someone’s Flickr account…
I thought I’d throw together a quick post on a couple articles from this week about my current org – Microsoft’s Digital Advertising Services (MDAS). First off is yesterday’s TimesOnline article, entitled “Microsoft’s chief executive has seen the future, and the future is advertising.” Stating the obvious, the article delves into Microsoft’s advertising strategy:
His advertising plans follow an established Microsoft pattern: chase a market leader into a new sector and pummel it into submission. That, after all, is what the company did to Lotus in spreadsheets (with Microsoft Excel) and Netscape in web browsers (through Internet Explorer).
Mr Ballmer suggests that there lies a new formidable force behind the drive into advertising. “My general rule of thumb today is that anything the consumer doesn’t have to pay for, they won’t,” he says.
No surprises here, but the really fun quote comes at the end:
“There is no way to play in broad consumer services unless you’re going to use advertising,” Mr Ballmer says, “and you only have two choices for advertising: one, you do it yourself, or you outsource it to Google. In our case, that’s probably not going to happen.”
Exactly. But of course, you want to do something slightly different. That’s what makes me so passionate about what we’re doing here, and about the aQuantive acquisition: its not just about search advertising (the space Google owns outright), but about the larger, and longer-term, customer need for a multi-platform advertising solution. A one-stop shop.
Steve said as much in another article yesterday in the NY Times:
“Over time, all ad money will go through a digital ad platform,” Mr. Ballmer told a gathering of European ad agencies and clients. “All media goes digital; all advertising goes digital.”
Gearing up for some pummeling…
