NEW YORK: Microsoft has beefed up its online ad network after reaching a deal with CNBC.com to sell text and display ads for the business news and information website.
While CNBC will retain control of the sales of video ads, Microsoft will take responsibility for premium and small ads, with its contextual offerings going live this month and its display ads in March next year.
Prior to CNBC's relaunch last year, MSN Money had provided the majority of the information available on the site for five years, and Microsoft is also a partner with NBC Universal, the parent company of CNBC, in news and current affairs website MSNBC.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Microsoft will collect data on visitors to CNBC.com (numbering over 1 million in November according to comScore) and produce ads targeted at them on its own web portal, with the CNBC site similarly running communications aimed at users of MSN.
Microsoft has also recently agreed ad sales deals with social networking sites Facebook and Digg as part of an ongoing effort to broaden the reach of its ad network.
Jon Tinter, Microsoft's general manager of online strategy and business development, said: "Microsoft is making some significant investments in the ad market and ad technology and a key way we'll generate returns is getting high-quality web publishers to adopt our technology and platform".
Data sourced from AdWeek (USA); additional content by WARC staff
