Microsoft Advertising now reaches more than a billion people

According to Microsoft’s internal data and also Comscore, Microsoft Advertising is celebrating a new milestone of reaching more than a billion people using properties that carry their ads.

The ads appear on properties such as Outlook.com, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft News/ MSN.com and several other Microsoft properties and premium publisher partners.

We reported recently that MSN News is now more popular than CNN and may soon overtake BBC.com.

The viewers of one property often also use another Microsoft property, resulting in an “overlapping audience” which is in fact more likely to be activated. Most are also Windows users, with 64% of people in the U.S. who use Windows devices also visiting Microsoft advertising properties, according to data from GlobalWebIndex U.S. for Q3 2021.

Microsoft Advertising says their audience is also valuable. 57% are between 16 and 44 years old and 51% have a college degree. 21% of users are entrepreneurs or interested in entrepreneurship, and 20% are more likely to be senior decision-makers. 61% are more likely to be early tech adopters and 19% plan to buy a laptop.

Microsoft reports that in 2021 Search advertising revenue increased $788 million or 10% to $8,528 million in 2021. This is still however only 5% of Microsoft’s revenue.

With Microsoft Advertising contributing significantly to Microsoft’s coffer and seemingly driving products such as the intrusive News and Interest widget on Windows 10 and 11, do our readers worry about Microsoft prioritising advertising revenue over user experience? Let us know below.

via MediaPost