by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
Andrew Girdwood
Microsoft's pay-per-click system offers demographic targeting. Through this feature, search marketers are able to increase or reduce the amount of money they are willing to bid depending on the audience. Microsoft's network of web sites, especially Hotmail, provides some of the demographic data for this service. The subscription data from Xbox Live, authenticated through credit card payment, is another rich vein of targeting information available to Microsoft.Speaking at PPC Earthquake in London last week, Nigel Leggatt discussed ways in which Microsoft could both reward Live searchers and improve the service. One approach would be to enrich the search experience for users by adding in data from other Microsoft services and improving Live Search's own performance with data from other areas. Leggatt, Marketing Manager at Microsoft AdCenter, put the Xbox Live service near the top of the list of examples.
Using Xbox subscription data to improve demographic targeting is just one possible mash-up of Live and Xbox Live services. Xbox Live allows game players to network with friends, receive alerts whenever these friends log into the system or even send messages across games. Windows Live Search is positioned to tap into that social network and use the search results page to show when a searcher's Xbox Live friend is online. Yahoo! already uses a smiling face icon to indicate when Yahoo! Messenger contacts are online but has not extended this strongly into search yet.
However - unlike the PS3 - the Xbox 360 does not have a web browser and so Microsoft has further to go in order to bring Live Search to the gaming console.
Microsoft is not the only search engine looking at device convergence. Yahoo! and Google are each pushing strong mobile search options. Yahoo's oneSearch has been peaking interest as it pushes forward with cleverly optimised delivery and carves out that all-important early market share. With oneSearch, Yahoo! users are able to stay connected to the Yahoo! Messenger network all the time. Rather than keeping users connected to the internet via their mobile, Yahoo! sets Yahoo! Messenger status to "mobile" once oneSearch has been activated. This allows other users to send messages to the mobile device at any time.
LG and Google announced a partnership at the end of March which would see the mobile maker bundling in applications for Google Maps, Gmail and even Blogger Mobile. As early as the second quarter of 2007, there will be an estimated 10 million new LG handsets that have the Google software already installed.
