Marketing Pilgrim

Microsoft will give Google a run for its money in any arena they can—and the latest effort looks to be focused on television advertising, with Microsoft’s acquisition of Navic, a TV advertising company.

Google’s slow foray into television advertising began last March, with confirmation coming last April. By January of this year, they had only 200 advertisers. The biggest announcement we’ve seen in Google’s television advertising was the integration with Google Analytics this month.

But slow-and-easy ain’t Microsoft’s style. Navic will be joining Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, home of the company formerly known as aQuantive. While Microsoft has made attempts to break into television advertising before, this acquisition supposedly signals a new level of focus on the industry, especially with Navic’s emphasis on “addressable” (which sounds an awful lot like “targeted”) and, yes, interactive TV advertising.

And Microsoft has already indicated that television advertising will be integrated into their current adCenter offerings, providing what AdWeek describes as “wide-ranging ad platform that would allow advertisers to place, target and track ads on the Web, mobile, in video games and now TV” (via).

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