Brief

Microsoft and NDTV Media partners for online ads

Rajnish India Head, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions

Niraj Dutt, COO, NDTV Media

Microsoft recently announced the launch of a digital advertising platform in India that aims to simplify digital advertising and create an ecosystem connecting advertisers and publishers. Microsoft has initially launched the platform in India with four publishers—Bollywood Hungama, Equity Master, HDFC Sec and Facebook. Microsoft also launched its Video Ad Platform with MSN Video and its mobile advertising initiative.

The concept of ad words was popularized by Google in early part of the decade and since then its more or less fixed the format of text ads. Though the advertisements on Web sites are behavior based, it would make little sense if they are not from the country that the viewers are surfing from. Hence in order to extend the market reach and for the growth of the industry as a whole, Microsoft is looking at various means of advertising on the Web. “In last two years, we have seen a phenomenal growth of this business. With the help of this move, publishers will be able to monetize video, search, search on mobile and display. We hope that it will help industry unlock the value of people using the content,” said Rajnish - India Head, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.

NDTV Media will serve as exclusive sales partner for the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions and it will bring advertisers to the Platform. Microsoft also announced the launch of its mobile advertising initiative in India. With this, the advertisers will be able to buy search keywords on live search deployed on Vodafone Live and also display banners on MSN Mobile portal at www.msnmobile.in.

Speaking about the future scope of this business, Niraj Dutt, COO, NDTV Media said, “We currently have around 400 advertisers online where as Television in India has around 9,000 and print has more than 1,50,000. This tells us that we still have a long way to go with this business. Our target is to have 750+ advertisers on the platform by the end of the calendar year.”