Cannes 2013 Video: Microsoft - Reaching Consumers in a Fragmented World

ClickZ speaks with Jennifer Creegan, general manager, display advertising at Microsoft about Windows 8, the new Ad Pano format, and how to reach consumers in this fragmented world.

“The Pano is really meant to be the opportunity for a marketer to build a magazine-like section that becomes integrated into the app. So it all starts with an active anchor ad in an app and then when the consumer engages, primarily through touch, it’s a full section for the customer that can map to all the content they’re building for their own marketing campaigns. It has been really successful for us in the beta partnerships, so we decided to build it out as a full-on ad experience and bring it to marketers,” says Creegan.

Creegan explained that it’s important to take the digital ecosystem and shift it, creating opportunities that consumers want to engage in and find relevant to their experience. Microsoft is focused on research around that, working to make advertising something that’s beautiful and releveant to users.

“We found that 60 percent of consumers that engage with our apps in Windows associate the brands with being cutting edge and innovative. To put that in perspective – we partnered with Nielsen on the research – it’s two times the Nielsen norms. We also found that when the ad is in context of the app…there was a 69 percent lift for consumers in brand affinity and purchase intent. And 67 percent of consumers found the advertising intuitive.”

Some of the big trends that Creegan is seeing at Cannes are, “How do we reach consumers in this fragmented world that makes sense to them? Marketers are spending an inordinate amount of their emphasis on content creation – what does that mean for the consumer and how do we partner together to make that useful for the consumer?”