Microsoft demos Bing tool for measuring ad effectiveness
Microsoft today demonstrated a new tool for its Bing search engine that will allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ads with online users.
Speaking at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo 2009 in New York, Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Audience Business group, showed what he called a "user-level targeting" tool that allows Microsoft to see which search-based ads that appear in the Bing search engine are getting the most traffic and from where.
"What we're doing with Bing for vigorous measurement is we're matching the exact ad online with the exact user," he said.
Mehdi said statistics show that 39% percent of Web users do 65% of online searches, so it would be beneficial for advertisers to see which of those "heavy users" are targeting certain ads, versus which ads are favored by "light users." The tool Microsoft created shows where the interest in a marketing or advertising campaign is specifically coming from, he said.
