The interviewer simply introduces his companion as a colleague who works in Microsoft’s online advertising vertical. For our convenience, let’s call this colleague of the interviewer, interceptor. The interceptor thanks the interviewer, greets you nicely at which point you notice that the interviewer gets up and takes leave from both of you. As the interviewer walks out of the room, the interceptor tells you that he would like this to be free-format discussion rather than a strict question-answer session. This is a new tack and it could mean that he will judge you based on how forthcoming you are in picking up the leads and how resourceful you are in fleshing up the conversation.
So, you start neutrally, “I read that Microsoft wrote off aQuantive and took a hit of $6.2 billion in its quarterly result. But you guys must be seeing this for some time?”
His eyes flickered, “Yes, you could say that.” He seemed to weigh his words before going any further. You decide to use silence as your tactical tool. Finally he spoke, “Online Advertising itself is a very new area and is going though continuous changes both from providers and advertisers’ point of view. Market saw explosive growth of online advertising spots in last two years, far exceeding the demand. In the hindsight, Microsoft may have put a little too high price for aQuantive.”
This is as far as it could get, you realise. You decide not
to press further. The interceptor goes
back to more familiar line and asks you to talk about your experience, your
achievements, and your failures. These are fillers and you know that all you
need is repeat your well-rehearsed pitch, not too aggressive, neither
too submissive, not too short, neither too elaborate, leaving pointers that
lead to known territory, your space of comfort. You know that he will play with
them for next 30 minutes. The important thing here is to maintain the flow but
to not make any obvious mistakes. Eventually he will move to the ‘challenge’ phase.
He will use chosen few questions as deal-breaker, assuming you have managed to
maintain his interest till that point.
“What in your view is situation with online advertising
space?” he changes the line and gives you a large canvas. “Online advertising is the future, no doubt, but it is highly likely that advertising itself will see a large transformation before we reach there.” His eyes tell you that you have grabbed his attention. Now you need to carefully steer it.
Basic purpose of advertising, to start with, is to reach out to its potential buyers. It starts with a process of building general awareness of the product, its functionality, its value both at functional and emotional plane. In a world that is information-deprived, such as in the post internet-era, advertising was essentially broadcast. Print media or TV/entertainment media were the avenues to reach its audience and the advertisement content producer’s sole aim was to create content that sticks in viewer’s mind the longest. Building a brand is all about creating lasting impression in customer’s mind, creating emotional connectivity with customer’s thought process.
In the internet-era, information access has been practically
‘on demand’. It is buyers’ media now.
While TV and print media advertising continues and will continue to
remain broadcast in nature, internet advertising must be focused on customer’s
need and reaching to customer when his need arises. If broadcast advertising is
more ‘push’ type, internet advertising is more a ‘pull’ type. Depending on the
type of information that a person is searching/reading in the internet, the
advertising agent has to pick and display the ad. If the agent provides too
many irrelevant display ad, the viewer/user may block the content. So the role
of the advertising agent is much more delicate, much more crucial here. With
doubleclick, if Google has showed how to appropriate the value of display ads,
it is also largely using its strength and dominance of its search engine.
Microsoft with aQuantive and Bing although tried to emulate the model, fact
that Bing commands a lot smaller share went against the model. Of course, with
meteoric rise of Facebook, like the interceptor said, supply of advertising
spots exceeded the demand by a large magnitude, bringing down the tariff of
internet display ad overall.
Note : The
average cost to reach 1,000 people with an online display ad fell to about
$11.50 at the end of 2011 from $13.35 in late 2009, according to SQAD Inc,
which tracks negotiated ad deals – source: Reuters
“Interesting! So how would you correct the course for
Microsoft, if you are allowed to? What changes will you bring in?”
This unmistakably is the challenge question. Shying away is
not only inappropriate, it will weaken your position. You must take this square
on and try to be crisp while you are on it.
“I would start with basics. Microsoft is what it is because
of Windows. I will start there. Windows is not only an operating system, it is
a complete platform with whole lot of computing resources and with lot of crucial
user-specific private data. Transferring the data outside user’s device would
be tantamount to violating user’s privacy, so I will incorporate a
sophisticated analytical engine inside Windows. It will continuously scan the
information content being read/browsed and create a some sort of a live ‘top of
mind’ list. When the customer invokes Explorer, I will provide a space which
user can disable or resize or run in the background, if he likes to, but like
news feed, this space will show display ads or links to the company that is
absolutely relevant to his ‘top-of-mind-list’. More it is contextual, the
better. Once this done properly same scheme can be used for Windows Phone too.
Fact is with Phone the potential is lot higher. The phone soon is becoming the
electronic gadget that will treble as communication device, entertainment
device, gaming device as well as mobile commercial device and if I have a
sophisticated platform like Windows, I will take full advantage of it by
incorporating an analytics engine that maintains a live four dimensional
profile of the user, the four dimensions being location, time, finance and
emotional/behavioural state. With voice-assistance, I suspect that this, if it
is done properly, it will be immensely useful to the customer too. Look at how
popular Siri is for iPhone/iPad users and this will be lot more smarter that
Siri! For amnesiacs, it will take the role of careful companion.
We will feed this engine with all the relevant advertising
content which will be entirely contextual where high premium will be attached
to relevance and physical/temporal proximity. That would not only create the
channel that Microsoft is looking for, it will also be welcomed by its
customers.
However, with the knowledge that Microsoft always works on
competing strategies, I suspect that Microsoft’s post-aQuantive engineering
team already is working on this line for it is the only way to deliver the
promises of internet-based advertising which essentially pulls the right ad at
right time to the right person, as many say!”
You did not notice when the interviewer came back but you
seem to notice their momentary eye-contact as you were coming back from the whiteboard. You know that you have been fairly logical and accurate but were you
a bit too assertive?
The
interceptor tells you that he thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and gives you
his card, when you realize your second interviewer is a Vice President in
Microsoft.
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