Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft today announced the acquisition of Israeli ad targeting firm, YaData. The company makes and sells analytic software to help Internet marketers segment audiences in greater detail for better ad targeting.

Microsoft today announced an agreement to acquire YaData Ltd., a provider of advanced tools for the discovery of unique customer segments. YaData’s technology will enable Microsoft to provide its advertisers with richer targeting capabilities so they can connect with their audience in more efficient and engaging ways, at the same time providing its customers more relevant and focused ads. The YaData team will join Microsoft’s Israel R&D center in Herzliya and YaData’s solutions will be deployed through Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group.

The price tag is rumored at $20-30 million. I offer my usual observation that better ad targeting inherently means less user privacy which may some day come home to roost at the hands of government regulators.

Microsoft today announced a new site that will be showing Microsoft Content Ads - the Wall Street Journal Digital Network:

The Wall Street Journal Digital Network today announced an agreement in which Microsoft Corp. becomes the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising for its network of sites, including The Wall Street Journal Online, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingsD.com and others.

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The addition of these sites brings an additional 20 million unique visitors per month to the extended Microsoft network, enabling advertisers to reach out to an increasingly deep and attractive audience in the financial services vertical. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is expected to begin providing Microsoft contextual advertising in February.

It is a two year deal with unspecified financial terms and Microsoft displaced Pulse 360 and business.com. Google’s erstwhile acquisition DoubleClick will continue to provide banner advertising.

The good news here is that this isn’t another instance of Microsoft vending old fashioned banner ads placed by their crew of banner ad salesman, but modern content targeted ads available to all advertisers through MSN adCenter:

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Viacom apparently isn’t put off by Microsoft’s abandonment of the URGE music service that their MTV subsidiary created with Microsoft, because they have signed on for a new long term advertising and content deal.

Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) and Microsoft Corp. today announced a broad-based, strategic alliance under which major divisions of both companies will collaborate on advertising, content distribution, event promotions and games over the next several years.

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Microsoft today announced an agreement with CNBC to be the financial network’s exclusive provider for banner and contextual ads for the fledgling CNBC.com (replacing Google’s would-be acquisition DoubleClick). You may recall that CNBC.com went its own way last year after having been hosted on MSN.

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Microsoft today decked out its Web advertising and webmaster outreach efforts with some of the bells and whistles already available to Yahoo and Google customers:

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