Microsoft

Dario Raciti has been working on bringing more brands to video games for over a decade. He’s finally given up. Ok, not really. But Raciti, Managing Director of OMG’s Zero Code, said more recently that he’s been trying to steer more clients toward the massive viewership emanating from people watching other people playing games –  […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif — Gone are the days since MSN was Microsoft’s only horse in the advertising race. Nowadays, the company’s ad offering encompasses Xbox, Outlook and a whole lot more. So Microsoft enlisted AppNexus to be its supply-side platform (SSP), the software ued to automate the sale of a publisher’s ads at scale. In […]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif – Having spent about seven years on the client side at Microsoft, it’s quite natural for Meredith Brace to don her “brand hat” when it comes to the issue of safe advertising environments. “I still look at it through that point of view,” says Brace, who is SVP, Digital Sales, Fox Networks […]

COLOGNE – With the ad industry’s preoccupation with premium video and digital media transparency, things like search engines tend to fly beneath the radar. But considering how search has morphed into personal digital assistants, it’s still a key driver of growth and opportunity for advertisers. This is particularly resonant for Microsoft, which unveiled Bing in […]

LAS VEGAS — Manually tagging your videos with all the possible people, things and phrases that appear within would be a time-consuming task for anyone, much less for content owners operating at scale. So Microsoft has brought its Cognitive Services machine learning suite to bear on video. Hosting a booth at NAB Show, Microsoft Azure Media Services […]

LAS VEGAS — While there’s lots of people populating video content, it takes too many others to screen and label it. That’s where artificial intelligence can provide a big assist. While “it’s early days” in such use of AI, “it’s an exciting solution to bring to market,” says Scott Braley, GM, Advertising Platforms, Ooyala, which […]

LAS VEGAS – Watson Ads, the cognitive advertising product that’s been available to brands exclusivity within The Weather Company app and on weather.com, will be released for wider use in apps and on websites sites later this quarter. In the meantime, in an interview at CES 2017 with Beet.TV, Weather Company CEO and GM Cameron […]

COLOGNE – At DMEXCO, the AOL advertising offering was increasingly global,  driven the company’s new role in managing the Microsoft advertising business.   At the show floor, we spoke with AOL’s global advertising sales chief Jim Norton about the integration with Microsoft and the opportunities in a number of markets. This video is part of […]

LAS VEGAS — DASH by name, dash by nature? The draft international standard for MPEG-DASH, the video standard bringing higher-quality video and audio to digital media by using adaptive bitrate streaming, was first specced out in 2011. Now it is fast being adopted by big-name video server vendors. “We have been involved in DASH from the very […]

LAS VEGAS — Microsoft has used the NAB Show to announce it is expanding its video services suite, including a new video player that speaks fluent HTML5 as well as other standards. Azure Media Services is getting a new video player and transcoding that will take place in the cloud. “(Azure Media Player) does automatic device detection and […]

LAS VEGAS — Microsoft is changing the way it works with advertisers, according to the woman recently hired to lead its US brand marketing relationships. “We are going through company-wide, top-down change,” Ritu Trivedi, who joined from being MediaVest’s USA digital marketplace VP in October, tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The product teams are now […]

CANNES, France — Once upon a time, it was just a games device. Now, Microsoft’s Xbox consoles are used to consume TV, video, music and other content. “Gaming is the core,” says Microsoft’s advertising GM, Scott Ferris. “Over half of people who buy Xbox for gaming end up using it as their all-up entertainment source.” […]

LAS VEGAS – As television, digital, radio and even live events come together, Skype has found a place in the middle of that convergence, connecting people worldwide via live television and digital, says Angie Hill, general manager of consumer marketing at Skype, in this interview with Beet.TV at the 2014 NAB Show last week. Skype […]

LAS VEGAS —  Microsoft’s global, cloud-based platform for delivering video, called Azure, is gaining momentum and customer wins in the aftermath of its successful streaming of the Winter Olympics, says Bob DeHaven, GM of Worldwide Communications and Media, in this interview with Beet.TV The media offering is also gaining attention in the aftermath of some […]

LAS VEGAS  — One of the top stories from the NAB Show was the accelerated support of streaming  video standard MPEG-Dash, perhaps  most notably with the announcement from Microsoft that it will support Dash with its media solutions. At NAB, we interviewed Iraj Sodagar, Principal Multimedia Architect at Microsoft, about the Dash initiative globally, its […]

LONDON — With added TV and video features, the recent launches of the next-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles has seen Microsoft and Sony move further increments closer toward their dreams of being living room entertainment super hubs. But that’s a “flawed strategy”, says one analyst. “The Xbox One strategy is … based on […]

COLOGNE — Microsoft wants to make its entire product line-up a billboard opportunity. The company wants brands to ride its many platforms and products to reach users, whether that’s via Windows 8, smartphones, gaming or Skype. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a homeworking scenario, a stay-at-home mom scenario, an auto researcher scenario,” says corporate […]

AMSTERDAM — At the International Broadcasting Convention, a video standard that enables high-quality live streaming from conventional HTTP servers took a step forward to satisfy content rightsholders. Microsoft announced the next version of its forthcoming PlayReady digital rights management standard would support the so-called MPEG-DASH standard in Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11. “You can […]

CANNES – Microsoft believes its Xbox game console can take marketers’ messages to consumers beyond gaming’s traditional hardcore audience. “The fastest-growing demographic on Xbox today is females aged 18 to 39, who happen to be the chief decision-makers on purchases in most households around the world,” Microsoft’s advertising and online corporate VP Frank Holland said. […]

LAS VEGAS – MPEG-DASH, an adaptive bitrate streaming technology that enables high-quality streaming via the Internet, received support from industry leaders such as Adobe, Microsoft and Qualcomm  at the DASH Industry Forum at NAB 2013. There, Beet.TV spoke with seven industry leaders for their take on what MPEG-DASH is doing for the industry and why […]