Microsoft on Thursday will call out its big gun, Chairman Bill Gates, to pitch to a select group of European advertising executives on the software titan's ambitious online media efforts. In its evolving strategy to overtake America Online as the global online media leader, Microsoft has been forging closer ties with the advertising decision makers just as the industry is experiencing the worst ad slump in recent memory. Despite the downturn, the software giant remains committed to a new two-pronged initiative: to market its .Net markup language technology for designing online advertisements to ad agencies and then sell them space for ads on its MSN Internet service and across its Web sites.
|