Microsoft gaining popularity in advertisement

Google is starting to feel the competition in the advertising market as Microsoft grabbing contracts with key companies to provide display and contextual advertising in the United States.

Following Facebook and Digg, CNBC also has chosen Microsoft as its global advertiser. Microsoft will take care of the bulk of selling banner and contextual advertising for the website CNBC.com

The exact details of the agreement have not yet been revealed but the reports say that Microsoft is going to handle the major part of the advertising. The advertising especially the contextual one is expected to be started by the end of this year whereas the digital advertising will start around March ‘08.

“Though CNBC's parent company NBC Universal has a relationship with DoubleClick that will continue, CNBC, which had been selling all the banners and contextual ads on its site, will now turn the bulk of that business over to Microsoft,” said Elizabeth Sami, senior vice president of business development at CNBC.com.

It can’t just be a coincidental that Google and DoubleClick are entering into a deal with Google buying DoubleClick. This deal is already a talk of the town as FTC chairperson Deborah Platt Majoras was asked to step back from considering the deal. The deal is still under scanning process by the federal authorities.

CNBC is majorly involved in providing real time news and feeds from the stock markets and other business related activities. Sami said that the company believes in the efficiency with which Microsoft can handle this project. According to her, Microsoft has the latest technology which is their major asset.

Microsoft has MSNMoney site through which it gives the ads for the companies it deals with. This was one of the major attractions for CNBC over the other advertisers.

Microsoft had purchased digital services agency aQuantive in May for around $6 billion. Jon Tinter, general manager, strategy and business development at Microsoft, thinks that finally that investment has started to pay off.

“It will be a combination of Microsoft's adCenter platform and technology from that acquisition that will be driving ad sales on the CNBC.com site,” he said.

Microsoft has been expanding its business through its Online Services Business (OSB) segment. For this it uses its most powerful tools Windows Live and MSN, which are amongst the world’s most visited sites.

Although the growth of the segment is slow as compared to the software sales, but the company is still optimistic about the opportunities in this area as there are actually very few players in this field who can guarantee the quality services. Revenue from online services grew by almost 8.7 percent from $2.3 million to $2.5 million in the fiscal year which ended in June ’07.