July 27, 2007 | Friday

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Microsoft on the deal trail again

By Jon Myers, Director Of Search in News |Search Engines |Microsoft |Search Technology

It’s been quite a week of deals for Microsoft in the past couple of days. They have completed a deal with Digg, the company then announced that it is looking to buy AdECN, an advertising exchange platform, This technology is an online marketplace for the buying and selling of display advertising.

These two deals along side each other really open up Microsoft’s opportunities within the online advertising arena and I expect to see good things in the future from it.

But also looking at the bigger picture this will surely integrate back into the newly formed ‘Applied Research Group’ which has been set up to develop areas in search ad technologies.

Kevin Johnson, Platforms and Services Division President explained the reason behind Microsoft’s plans:

We believe the addition of AdECN to the Microsoft portfolio is a perfect fit and will create more efficiency for the industry by forming a more robust marketplace between advertisers and publishers, aggregating more supply and demand. This is good for the whole advertising industry.”

This is all good stuff from Microsoft and it will be really interesting to see how this distributes out to the market. I would expect that it will be US first and then rolling out to the European market. Will this have an effect on the Google UK hold only time will tell.