REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 12, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled the Microsoft® adCenter Incubation Lab (adLab) during its adCenter Demo Fest, an exposition of industry-leading research and innovation in the field of digital advertising technology from Microsoft researchers.
adLab, a joint effort between MSN’s adCenter and Microsoft Research, is a state-of-the-art lab in Beijing with a mission to research and incubate advanced technologies for MSN’s adCenter, designed to provide advertisers with rich targeting capabilities based on audience intelligence information and give consumers a more relevant online experience.
adLab’s top-notch group of more than 50 researchers will develop advertising solutions that connect marketers with consumers in more relevant, innovative ways unseen in the industry before now. Today at the adCenter Demo Fest on the Microsoft campus, the researchers gathered to present prototypes of more than 15 of the approximately 40 advertising technologies they are currently working on for long-term implementation, including online advertising solutions, video opportunities, and television and mobile-based advertising products.
These prototypes hold the promise to change online advertising dramatically in areas such as paid search, behavioral targeting and contextual advertising. Also shown were projects addressing areas of incubation in their earliest stages of investigation, such as ad bar-code readers, social network mining, and video and large-display ads.
“The exciting work being shown at adCenter Demo Fest and the new Microsoft adLab reflects Microsoft’s commitment to innovation in the field of ad products,” said Tarek Najm, general manager of adCenter at Microsoft. “The Microsoft team of top researchers in this field is unsurpassed and certain to produce compelling advances that will impact and ultimately change the game in online advertising. With this long-term applied research, we will continue to help improve advertisers’ return on investment by delivering rich audience intelligence information and enabling simple and complete control over all aspects of the advertising campaigns.”
One of the innovative technologies highlighted at the event was video hyperlink ads, which can detect product items displayed on a television screen during a show or commercial, allowing consumers to zoom into products featured on the television screen and click through to detailed product descriptions and information on where the products can be bought.
The adLab will be headed jointly by Ying Li, Ph.D., of Microsoft adCenter in Redmond and Jian Wang, Ph.D., of Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, and will consist of a team of dedicated scientists with specializations in the areas of data mining, information retrieval, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, auction theory, visual computing and digital media. Together, this group of internationally renowned researchers has published more than 80 articles on a range of topics including information retrieval, data mining, visual computing and smart devices.
About MSN and Windows Live
MSN® attracts more than 440 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. Windows Live™, a new set of personal Internet services and software, is designed to bring together in one place all the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. MSN and Windows Live will be offered alongside each other as complementary services. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com. MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com. MSN worldwide sites are located at http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx.
About Microsoft Research
Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience on computing devices, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies. Researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user-interface research, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences. Microsoft Research employs more than 700 people in six labs located in Redmond, Wash.; San Francisco; Silicon Valley, Calif.; Cambridge, England; Beijing; and Bangalore, India. More information can be found at http://research.microsoft.com.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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