Microsoft Corp's online advertising researchers will spend this year teaching computers to be smart about sticking ads into video clips, and to be even smarter about targeting ads to specific Web surfers.
Microsoft showed off a handful of early-stage advertising projects at its headquarters on Tuesday that may or may not turn up as part of Microsoft's Web advertising platform.
The demonstrations come just days after Microsoft's US$44.6 billion bid for Yahoo Inc, which, if successful, will boost the former's Web traffic and online ad revenue.
With its 2006 acquisition of aQuantive, the software maker gained a broader network of Web sites on which to sell ads, and tools to help marketers buy them.
A few of Microsoft's projects were aimed at helping advertisers get better at reaching their ideal customers online, particularly using search keywords.
The company showed a dashboard advertisers could use to forecast the success of certain keyword advertising campaigns and a system it says will make it easier for advertisers think about key ideas, rather than hundreds of individual keywords.
But most of the adCenter Labs prototypes had little to do with search.
"Search itself gets a lot of attention because of Google," said Tarek Najm, a technical fellow at Microsoft. "Advertising in search, as a result, gets a lot of attention."
Najm said spending on search keyword ads will be dwarfed by what marketers spend on other types of online advertising, such as placement based on "audience intelligence" -- figuring out what kind of person the Web user is based on their surfing and searching habits -- and display ads including video.
Microsoft -- along with Google Inc and other competitors -- is also hard at work on new ways for companies to advertise their brands to Web surfers watching video clips.
One crunched a clip, looking for the most appropriate stretch of time and spot on the screen for an advertiser's "bug," or logo.
For example, if a car company wanted to show its logo for 10 seconds in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, the computer program would then find the 10 seconds in which the logo interferes least with the action in the video.
Another used speech recognition to make a transcript of a video, then served up ads -- in the demonstration they were text links -- alongside the video. As the topics discussed on screen changed, so did the ads.
The third program scanned a video for surfaces where ads or product images could be inserted later.
The demo showed how the same frames could display a Coca-Cola ad one moment and a Pepsi ad the next without having to reshoot the video.
Other experiments included an interactive shopping kiosk that used elements of Microsoft Surface, a next-generation touch screen, to show ads and coupons, and a computer program that helped marketers avoid accidentally putting their brand on a Web page with distasteful content.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS