Microsoft Seeks 30 Percent Of Search Market And Much Bigger Chunk Of Online Ad Revenues

Nov 16, 2007 at 9:48am ET by Greg Sterling

Reuters reports on a speech given at an investor conference by Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division. In the speech Johnson reportedly said that Microsoft wants to capture 30 percent of the consumer search market as well as a much larger slice of the online ad pie, in “three to five years.” Johnson added that the company wants to be “one of the top two” in online advertising. The other one would of course be Google.

The entire effort was dubbed the “10, 20, 30, 40 plan” after Microsoft’s market share aspirations for its various products and initiatives. Missing from the article was a discussion of how these goals might be accomplished. As for the figures:

10 Percent, Page Views: Microsoft wants portal pages and services like MSN and Windows Live Mail to comprise 10 percent of all web page views
20 Percent, Time: Microsoft wants total time spent on sites it owns to rise from 17 to 20 percent.
30 Percent, Search Share: Microsoft wants its share of search to rise to 30 percent (NOTE FROM DANNY: Wow. Better go buy Yahoo. That would be the easiest, fastest way to actually do this in the face of generally declining share, as covered recently in Google Top Worldwide Search Engine; Baidu Beats Microsoft and Google Top Worldwide Search Engine; Baidu Beats Microsoft)
40 Percent, Online Advertising: Microsoft wants to capture 40 percent of all digital advertising spending, up from an estimated 6 percent now.

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

See more articles by Greg Sterling >

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