After joking that Group M's Irwin Gotlieb might have been the only person in the audience who understood what was going on in a just-concluded presentation of potential future ad technologies, Yusuf
Mehdi, Microsoft's senior vice president and chief advertising strategist, wrapped up the opening day of the company's Strategic Account Summit by summarizing some real-world ad success stories:
To promote the debut of Universal Pictures' "Children of Men" on DVD, Microsoft's Instant Messenger used a rich media window for the first time, resulting in nearly 2 million
expansions of the window--and 12% of those 2 million proceeding to interact with the ad content.
Citigroup's branded online Golden Globes coverage on the MSN Network resulted in 165 million
page views.
A special version of Procter & Gamble's Bunco! game, available through the MSN.com home page, resulted in the target audience of women 35-54 spending an average of 45 minutes
playing the game, compared with a normal average playing time of 7.8 minutes in the MSN GameZone.
Turning to search, Mehdi said that Microsoft is working on tools for better intelligence about
consumer behavior. He noted that due to a "last click" focus, "many of the dollars being spent on brand and display are being credited to search."
Mehdi said that after a year, adCenter now has
more than 80,000 advertisers, with the yield per search now ahead of the previous Overture system.
In other advertiser news from the Microsoft SAS, Volvo and Chivas will sponsor two new MSN
Original video series produced by Reveille, the company behind NBC's "The Office" and ABC's "Ugly Betty," and set to premiere in the next six months. Volvo's series, starring the cast of "The Office,"
is an original comedy called "Driving School," while Chivas will "identify and celebrate consumers living The Chivas Life." MSN and Reveille have previously collaborated on Kraft's "Chef to the
Rescue" and Cingular's "The Big Debate."
Also, Publicis Group and its units Droga5 and Digitas announced the launch of Honeyshed, a site dedicated to branded programming.
*
This story was modified after its original posting because of an error made by the speaker.