Microsoft’s Online Push (MSFT)(TWX)(YHOO)(GOOG)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Microsoft thinks it has come up with a way to out-Google Google. Target display ads by consumer behavior.

The big software company is going to track the interests of its 263 million Hotmail users and searches on Microsoft Live.

The company says that the personal data being used will be kept confidential. Promises. Promises.

Microsoft claims it has signed up 100 advertisers for the program.

It does not seem like much of a winner. AOL has plenty of e-mail users. So does Yahoo!. So, duplicating the sevice should not be hard for competitors.

Microsoft needs something to help its online ad revenue. In the third quarter it rose only 5% over last year. Rival Google’s ad revenue rose 70% for the same period.

Sort of like hunting an elephant with a sling-shot.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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