DoctoRevenue

It is our priority to provide developers around the globe an opportunity to make money using the Microsoft Advertising Solution and today we are happy to announce we are expanding our solution into seven new countries on February 1, 2012: Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Mexico, Sweden, and Switzerland. Now, developers from nineteen countries (full list below) can make money by taking advantage of Microsoft’s Advertising solution for mobile developers.

Our solution includes ad controls that are built right into the Windows Phone SDK; combined with pubCenter’s self-serve sign-up, reporting and automated payouts, we ensure a seamless experience. After your app goes live in the marketplace and users start to use it, you can watch your revenue grow.

Developers will need to provide account information into pubCenter required for payment. Once advertising revenue reaches the minimum amount required for payout (see table below), and the developer has completed the steps necessary for payment, Microsoft will start sending money their way.

The Microsoft Advertising solution for Windows Phone apps has been shown to make more money for developers than other solutions in the market… up to 71% more in a recent study!

Here are three easy steps to get started:

Have questions? Check out the Microsoft Advertising Forum. To send us feedback and have your voice heard, please contact psupport@microsoft.com (English only)

Thank you from Microsoft Advertising.

Avi Sagiv

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to work in advertising. There was something so exciting and alluring about creating an ad that made people actually feel something. I had to be a part of that. I imagined myself creating one of those brilliant spots running during the Superbowl or being part of the team that made it happen. I wanted to bring the world the next “Herding Cats” or create thirty seconds of something so memorable, it would become part of our regular conversation like McDonald’s “The Shootout.” (“Over the second rafter, off the floor, nothing but net.” If you ever played basketball, you know you said this at least once). Coca-Cola knows exactly how it feels to be the advertising great I had dreamed of. In 1979, it aired “Mean Joe Green” that to this day remains in the top Superbowl ads of all time.

When we had a chance to interview Johnathan Mildenhall, VP, Global Advertising Strategy & Content Excellence for The Coca-Cola Co. at Advertising Week, I couldn’t wait take a peek into how such a huge global brand develops these campaigns and how they plan on transforming the user experience in the future. Take a look at what Jonathan Mildenhall had to say on innovation, creativity and so much more just after he took the stage at IAB MIXX:

There are many useful marketing tidbits in the interview, but my favorite part? “I think it’s really, really important that everybody feels very, very comfortable with change and very comfortable with innovation.”

I don’t know about you, but that statement alone gets me excited to see how Coca-Cola will be integrating new technology with advertising to bring us creative, all-new experiences in the future. More interactive ads on Xbox? Connected experiences with our TVs and PCs? We’ll have to wait and see, but you can believe I’ll be glued to the TV and sharing the videos online come February 5. How about you?

Stay Curious!

Shelby Healy – Microsoft Advertising

Along with our well-watched interview with Sir Martin Sorrell, we captured other delightful digital insight from a number of industry luminaries at CES 2012.

In this clip we talked to Curt Hecht from VivaKi, who gives his thoughts on how his teams approach advertising with Microsoft and what they’ll be looking to capitalise on in 2012.

Adore his comment on advertisers loving “sight, sound and motion”!

Watch on and let us know your thoughts!

More soon…….

Cheers

Mel Carson – Digital Marketing Evangelist

UK Finance Trends and Digital Opportunities

With consumer confidence remaining at all-time lows, and negative perceptions of the high street banks, (45%* feel banks have lost touch with their customers) finance brands in the UK are under increasing pressure to rebuild relationships with the public. 

Although times are hard, there is a real opportunity to engage with an audience who sees little differentiation in this marketplace (62%* agree that “most high street banks are pretty much the same as each other).

Finance brands need to rebuild brand confidence and create greater client engagement opportunities (43% of 16-24 year olds want to build a relationship with their bank*)

With consumers increasingly interested in their finances, we know that the internet provides them with a wealth of information. 69% of all adults say that the internet is the first place they look when they seek financial information. 

Finance brands should consider the following digital opportunities to help rebuild brands and re-engage with their consumers:

1. Brand building with creative Channel Takeovers: To build brands you need to reach large audiences and with the MSN UK homepage having almost 19 million visitors per month (44% of the total Internet population**) you can do just that in a cost effective way. In two months more people visit the MSN Homepage than fly out of Gatwick Airport in a year!

Gone are the days of the humble banner ad format. MSN UK has recently launched several new creative ad formats including the award winning Filmstrip, a brilliant format that encourages deep levels of engagement in a very intuitive style with 5 separate panels that the user can scroll through to explore all different types of content.

The billboard, a huge canvas that sits as not only the largest image on the MSN homepage but also the first image a user will see, sitting above the editorial content, just below our site navigation bar, offering a perfect extension of any large format offline campaigns, in particular outdoor and press.

The 3D Cube combines the impact of a rich media homepage takeover with heightened engagement and interactivity through a user-initiated experience. Six panels showcasing a range of rich media content ensure that the 3D Cube combines a high-impact brand showcase with the opportunity for in-depth messaging.

Read more on new MSN UK ad formats

2. Creative Engagement: To drive client engagement you need truly creative solutions – campaigns with high dwell time saw an average of 69% improvement in campaign effectiveness. We’ve seen users spend more than double the minutes on MSN due to the stickiness of its editorial and personalized social content.

On example is the MSN “Travel Tip Off” with Capital One Ezine. 

3. Targeted Engagement. We have access to one of the biggest pools of data in the market, with Windows Live ID, search data, user behaviour across our portal and gaming information from our Xbox audience. We can combine that with data from Clients – on site visits to aid re-messaging, through to database information to help target engaged customers already down the purchase funnel. Finally we work with 3^rd party providers to layer offline data about consumers and their behaviours to drive targeting at scale.

4. New Innovations: Consumers are in control and taking for granted features like ‘live pause’, ‘multi-touch’, and ‘carrying over personalisation to other devices’. Microsoft’s consumer vision is to enable this world through ‘3 Screens and the Cloud’. The cloud is where you live your digital life: communicate with each other, consume content, shop, search, play. We want to be the leader provider of these services. We also want to help tie them together. Single ID, remember your settings, all your social media status/updates in one place. We want to help you access the cloud: this is the 3 screen strategy: whether phone, PC, or TV, Microsoft’s vision is to make your life and everyday tasks easier, simpler, fun.

By the way did you know 60% of regular MSN/ Windows Live users own at least one credit card and 29% regularly use their credit card as method of payment when making internet purchases so we have unique access to a relevant and engaged audience (TGI GB Q1 2011).

I hope you found this useful!

Lucinda Johnson, Client Business Manager, Microsoft Advertising

P.S. Here are a few useful infographics:

1. Consumers and General Insurance: Infographic Overview (Dec 2011: Mintel)

2. Consumers and Retail Banking: Infographic Overview (Oct 2011: Mintel)

3. Consumer Attitudes towards Debt – UK: Infographic Overview (Aug 2011: Mintel)

* Source: GMI/Mintel: 1,968 internet users with a current account

**November comscore 2011