Smart Ads with Microsoft

Online Advertising boost an attention in the past few years with google adsense pioneers its innovative idea in their text related ads. A big news this year that Microsoft Corp.'s will take a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo Inc. and possibly take its share. Microsoft's Online Advertising researchers are spending a lot of time teaching computers to be smart about sticking ads into video clips, and to be even smarter about targeting ads to specific Web surfers.

Microsoft's Smarts Ads program reported with this features:
One crunched a clip, looking for the most appropriate stretch of time and spot on the screen for an advertiser's "bug," or logo. For example, if a car company wanted to show its logo for 10 seconds in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, the computer program would find the 10 seconds in which the logo interferes least with the action in the video.

Another used speech recognition to make a transcript of a video, then served up ads -- in the demonstration, they were text links -- alongside the video. As the topics discussed on screen changed, so did the ads.

The third program scanned a video for surfaces where ads or product images could be inserted later. The demo showed how the same frames could display a Coke ad one moment and a Pepsi ad the next, without having to reshoot the video.

If Microsoft Corp.'s wins the bid to yahoo i think a new ways of online advertising will take into action.

Yahoo possibly take Microsoft's bid?

Last Friday Yahoo Inc. boards reported for a special meeting to discuss it's primary concern for a bid on its share to Microsoft Corp.'s offer valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, when it was announced a week ago.

The bid was 62 percent above Yahoo's sagging stock at the time, making it difficult for Yahoo's board to reject unless the company can devise a plan compelling enough to produce a similar lift to its market value.

From a source news in yahoo stated:
"In the most likely outcome foreseen by industry analysts, Yahoo will either begin negotiating the final terms of an amicable sale to Microsoft or undergo a painful reorganization that would include relinquishing control of its search engine and a big piece of its advertising to rival Google Inc.

If it's rebuffed, Microsoft has indicated it may try to override Yahoo's board and take its offer directly to the company's shareholders in a battle that could drag on through the spring."

Its a big possibilities now that Microsoft Corp.'s will take over yahoo's share, but for now Microsoft still has time to weigh its options because the deadline for nominating a different slate of Yahoo directors — a key weapon in hostile takeover attempts — isn't until March 13.