• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 18, 2010

In an important vote of confidence for a promising new online advertising platform, Microsoft has certified Pictela, allowing it to serve its super rich units across all of Microsoft's online publishing properties, including MSN and Windows Live. Microsoft's certification is the last -- and was perhaps the toughest -- of the major portals to certify Pictela's ad-serving platform, which is capable of delivering high-density and high-definition content directly into standard online advertising formats on existing publishers' pages.

From a technical point of view, the milestone marks the first "rich" advertising media platform to be certified by the Big 3 portals -- AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo -- in years, and gives Pictela critical mass of coverage among the major online publishing sites.

In addition to the big portals, Pictela is now certified, and used, by more than 30 publishers including Hearst, Conde Nast, Meredith, Rodale, MTV, Hachette, Maxim, Turner, National Geographic, USA Today, Glam Media, and Pandora.

Launched last year, Pictela to date has served campaigns for more than 50 brands including Disney, Macy's, Kraft, Nike, BMW, H&M, Gillette, Kohl's, Target, Victoria's Secret, Bacardi, Infiniti and Revlon.

Retailers are especially keen on the platform, because the robust capacity of Pictela's serving technology allows them to serve incredibly fat content, including the online equivalents of printed catalogues or even high-definition video ads or programming content within standard advertising display units without leaving a publisher's page.

Pictela's platform is so robust, in fact, that Microsoft also announced that it would become the first platform to market Pictela's units directly to advertisers and agencies for online display ads on MSN and Windows Live.