Microsoft unveils research centre to aid advertisers

"The bottom line is to improve our advertisers' ROI by providing a one-stop shopping experience for every facet of their online campaigns, as well as more in-depth knowledge about the consumers who are clicking on their online ads," said Gina Hertel, head of trade marketing, Asia-Pacific, Greater China, Latin America and Canada, Microsoft MSN. "By building the underlying technology in-house, we can respond to advertisers changing needs and goals." New areas for development include paid search, behavioural targeting and contextual advertising, online bar code readers, social network mining and video and large-scale ads. The Beijing AdLab will work closely with existing research centres at Microsoft headquarters at Redmond in the US.