Microsoft Reorganizes Marketing Team, Appoints Chief Creative Officer

Microsoft has reorganized its central marketing group and among the changes is the naming of a chief creative officer. Gayle Troberman, a 13-year veteran of the Redmond, Wash.-based software company, has been named to the position, which is still a relatively rare one among client-marketers. Ms. Troberman is charged with working among the campaign teams and agencies responsible for creative and looking at new marketing approaches and emerging marketing platforms. Most recently, she was general manager of Microsoft’s advertising and customer engagement, leading global advertising, relationship marketing and digital strategy for Microsoft’s consumer, business-to-business and developer-focused products and services. Prior to that, she launched and ran Microsoft’s digital branded-entertainment.

Read More: AdAge

DSP’s Are Not Just Cookie Monsters

There’s been a lot of chatter in the marketplace of late on the evolving nature of DSPs, networks, SSPs, agencies, and data providers.  Like it or not, direct response advertisers have moved the market—they started with ad networks over 10 years ago, took early control of search advertising, were among the first buyers of mass exchange inventory, and now gobble up cookies in DSPs. Good for them. If you look at the list of Fortune’s top 1,000 companies, Inc’s 500, or Forbes biggest companies, few of them sell or will ever sell products online at scale.  Even for those that do, to wit, I suddenly didn’t wake up this morning and intend to buy an iTouch for my twins; there was awareness, which Apple has done across all media, consideration, deliberation, favorability, and finally intent.  The current rush to the bottom of the purchase funnel devalues or otherwise ignores the top.

Read More: AdExchanger

Google To Be Aggressive In Renewing AOL Search Deal

It won’t be easy for Microsoft (MSFT) to outbid Google for AOL’s search business, a source close to Google’s Mountain View headquarters tells us. This source says Googlers are talking about plans to be to be “aggressive” during negotiations. AOL’s current search deal with Google (GOOG) ends soon, and earlier this year, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said he’s accepting offers from all parties for the next deal. “Google’s been a great partner. They’re obviously going to get first dibs, [but] Microsoft and other people are very interesting partners as well.” “I had a Google sweatshirt on for almost a decade and I have an AOL sweatshirt on now. That’s really what I need to do and our team needs to do: Make sure we get the right deal for AOL.” Tim met with Microsoft’s Bing boss, Yusef Mehdi, in September. The main thing Tim and AOL want from a search deal is to be able to run search ads linking to AOL (AOL) content instead of ads linking to the search provider’s advertisers.

Read More: SiliconAlleyInsider