Microsoft is baking a replacement cookie technology that would share content between mobile and desktop PC browsers, and even the Xbox, in an effort to take the growing market for mobile ads and target them even more effectively at the end user.
Ad Age reported that Microsoft is working on the technology, with no timetable given for when it could be rolled out to advertisers. Microsoft didn't return a request for comment on whether the reports are true. Google has also been rumored to be at work on its own replacement for the cookie.
Microsoft's technology also wouldn't necessarily be a "cookie," a crumb of digital information that could be passed from advertiser to advertiser around the Web. Instead, Microsoft would "own" the user data. That might eliminate concerns about digital information being sold to other third-party companies and spread widely over the Web, but it would also allow Microsoft to build a more comprehensive digital profile of a user. That profile could conceivably include all kinds of information, including demographics and what kinds of products a user prefers.
An example of a cookie stored in Google's Chrome browser.
All this reported cookie tinkering comes as revenue from traditional search and desktop banner ads dip, according to a Wednesday report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Price Waterhouse Coopers. Overall, the total ad spend for online ads has grown 18 percent to $20.1 billion during the first half of 2013, according to the report. But the percentage of search ads dipped from 48 percent to 40 percent versus the first half of 2012, while display-related ads (banner ads, video, and other rich media) also fell from 33 percent to 30 percent. That, not surprisingly, was sucked up by mobile, which saw its share of the online ad market jump from 7 to 15 percent: $3.0 billion in all, the report found.
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