MAM
MSN brings together advertising, marketing leaders at summit
MUMBAI: Tomorrow 17 March Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will deliver the keynote address at the sixth annual MSN Strategic Account Summit in the US.
At the event many of the industry’s innovative thought leaders will meet to discuss what will shape the online American advertising industry today and in the future. Based on feedback from marketers and customers, MSN developed a two-day agenda with the theme of Mastering the Medium. The aim is to help the more than 500 attendees identify opportunities to most effectively reach their audiences.
Attendees also will gain insights into MSN’s vision and strategy and will have the opportunity to hear and interact with industry-leading speakers in categories such as branding, direct-response campaigns and privacy. Examples of innovative work, best results, trends and accomplishments
that reach beyond the boundaries of today’s advertising will be highlighted at the summit to encourage the industry to continue to move forward on the road to mastery.
The speakers at the summit include reality TV guru Mark Burnett, chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp Barry Diller and Young & Rubicam chairman and CEO Ann Fudge. Ballmer says, “Microsoft’s Strategic Account Summit is one of the most important industry events of the year for advertisers, publishers and creative agencies. We are proud to host many of the top thought leaders from the advertising and media community, and join them in addressing how to interact and communicate with consumers in new and meaningful ways online.”
At the summit MSN also will unveil Microsoft’s next-generation online advertising platform, MSN adCenter. The tool is aimed at helping advertisers get higher returns by understanding and connecting to their desired audience throughout the MSN network.
Within the MSN adCenter platform, the new MSN paid-search solution will be tightly integrated with other future capabilities to give advertisers a one-stop shop from which to plan, execute and adjust their online campaigns. The new MSN paid-search solution will provide keyword buyers with in-depth audience intelligence including geographic location, gender, age group, lifestyle segment and time of day. As a result, advertisers should be able to plan more strategic advertising investments and achieve higher click-to-buy conversion rates among consumers.
MSN has stated that it remains committed to working with Yahoo! Search Marketing and will continue to collaborate with it to offer high-quality search listings to advertisers.
MAM
IAS launches Total TV suite to boost transparency in CTV ads
New solution offers programme-level insights across platforms and publishers.
MUMBAI: In the world of streaming, what you see is not always what advertisers get and that’s exactly the problem IAS is looking to fix. Integral Ad Science (IAS) has unveiled ‘IAS Total TV’, a new suite of Connected TV (CTV) solutions aimed at bringing what it calls “linear-like” transparency to the fast-growing streaming ecosystem. In simple terms, it is an attempt to make digital TV advertising a lot less of a black box.
The offering aggregates programme-level data covering genre, ratings, language, shows and specific content from major platforms including Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Prime Video, along with opted-in publishers via Publica. All of this is housed within the IAS Signal interface, giving advertisers a unified view of where their ads actually appear.
The timing is hardly accidental. According to Nielsen, as of Q4 2025, 74.2 per cent of all TV viewing in the United States is ad-supported. Of that, streaming alone accounts for 45.6 per cent outpacing traditional television and cementing its position as the largest ad-supported medium. Advertisers have followed suit, funnelling premium budgets into CTV, but often without a clear, standardised view of performance or placement.
That gap is precisely what IAS is targeting. By combining content insights with media quality, supply path data and campaign outcomes, the platform aims to give marketers more control over when, where and alongside what content their ads run. The goal is not just visibility, but accountability ensuring ads land in brand-suitable environments rather than disappearing into opaque inventory pools.
The suite also promises practical gains. Marketers can access real-time, aggregated transparency across shows and platforms, streamline campaign controls across digital video channels, and leverage third-party verification to improve efficiency and pre-bid decision-making. Measurement tools extend to quality reach and incremental conversions, offering a clearer link between spend and outcomes.
At a time when high CPMs and fragmented data make CTV both attractive and complex, the push for transparency is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity. IAS’s move reflects a broader industry shift, where the race is no longer just for eyeballs, but for clarity on what those eyeballs are actually watching.
Because in streaming’s premium playground, knowing the content may just matter as much as owning the audience.
