Business software may be profitable, but the growth and sex appeal is in advertising. At least, Microsoft seems to thinks so. Amidst efforts to make headway with its takeover offer for Yahoo, the Redmond giant today said it’s agreed to buy online ad analytics firm Rapt. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. It’s a move that could be important for Microsoft because it would give the company the ability to see how much advertisers are paying for online ads and what their conversion rates are — an ability Google already has through Ad Manager and Google Analytics.
This worries some in the advertising industry. When a company like Google or Microsoft can track what an advertiser is paying for ads and the conversion rates across multiple sites, they can estimate how much an advertiser might be willing to pay — and raise the price to that ceiling. Transparency in markets is generally a good thing, but in this case it benefits Google and Microsoft — not necessarily the wider world of publishers and advertisers.
7 comments so far
9:28 AM PT
Microsoft can never have something like “Google Ads”. Google is just to popular and just too smart for Microsoft to compete.
bookmarked @ http://www.livbit.com
9:32 AM PT
Could there possibly be a way Microsoft could make AdCenter worse? It there is, I think this could be it.
9:35 AM PT
*If
Sorry, I hate being on record with a typo.
10:52 AM PT
[...] покупкой стал Rapt, продающий системы продажи (ну надо же их тоже продавать) рекламы [...]
11:09 AM PT
[...] discussion of this acquisition can be found here, here, here and [...]
12:58 PM PT
Rapt isn’t a analytic firm.
It helps publishers to get the most money out of their ad inventory.
The worrying part is that Microsoft is on the both sides of advertising, publisher and advertiser.
On one hand, advertisers use AdCenter to advertise. Advertisers want to pay less per click/impressions.
On the other hand, MS will help publishers to get the most bucks for their money. Publishers want to get more per click/impressions.
See the conflict of interest?
so who will MS actually help out more?
9:15 PM PT
Well Microsoft needs to do SOMETHING different if they are going to compete in the ad space. AdCenter is terrible and yields next to no results.
John
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