In a conversation with John Battelle this morning at the Web 2.0 Summit, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, disclosed the four things Microsoft will need to do if they want to reach their goal of having 25% of their revenues coming from advertising in the future.
- Do search well
- Be good at community and communications
- Have a strong advertising platform that delivers all payloads in all media compatible with all business models
- Have ads you sell on behalf of other people.
What it means: I was listening to Ballmer’s list and I quickly realized this sounded very close to what local search experts (like The Kelsey Group or Greg Sterling) have been suggesting to directory publishers in the last couple of years: build a better local search destination, leverage the sales force to sell a variety of ad products and launch social tools. Is Microsoft a potential partner for directory publishers or will it be seen as a competitor?
Seb Provencher's Blog 
Thanks for the mention Seb. This is a key issue i think. Check out the Search Engine Watch column today that gets into some of these sales channel partnership matters.
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627341
Thanks for the mention Seb. This is a key issue i think. Check out the Search Engine Watch column today that gets into some of these sales channel partnership matters.
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627341