Re-posting this video seeing as I’m down in Singapore right now.

I’m en route to Hong Kong to see the Microsoft Advertising Asia team there and speak at SES Hong Kong.

I’ll be on the B2B ROI and Social Media panel with Eddie Choi at the helm.

Lots to come from this part of the world. I met a lot of agency and brand execs while I was in Cannes.

Check out these video interviews from our Microsoft Advertising YouTube Channel from the advertising festival in the South of France

Trying to keep Tiger Beer in business until Lee Odden and others get here

Thought I’d start adding one of my fave photos every time I post some content from other blogs I have a hand in.

Today’s is a snap from a game drive at dawn in the Kruger National Park in South Africa last year. We were staying at the Arathusa Game Lodge on a holiday we’ll never forget.

Anyway…………….day dream over!

Microsoft Advertising Blog

Attention Please: Advertising in the Age of Overload

Think Visibility 2010 – Microsoft Advertising Speaking on Social Media and Community

Microsoft Advertising Asia Digital Showcase Video and Online Marketing Resources

UK OFCOM Report Proves Multi-Screen is Marketing Manna

Admira – Bringing the Emotion to Digital Affordably via TV

Microsoft Advertising TV – Episode 1 – Multi-screen Digital Research, Spikes Asia, Cloud Computing

Microsoft adCenter Blog

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance News: Organic Search Update on the Bing Blog

Digital Image: Looking After Your Online Reputation

Updated Tutorials for adCenter Desktop Beta in the Microsoft adExcellence Classroom

SES San Francisco: All Customers Are Not Created Equal

SES San Francisco: Making the Leap From Search to Display

I’ve been a very bad person and not written for Media Week for a while so promise to get back on it next week after our long weekend in the Isle of Arran.

The Wall Blog

Link Bait! How to Stand Out on Twitter

Microsoft Advertising Blog

Microsoft’s Rick Song Wins The Advertising Club President Award

Microsoft Advertising Unveils Online Circulars for MSN Local Edition (U.S.)

Introducing Our New UK Performance Team

Xbox Lips Lite Case Study has Games Advertising Singing Digital

Microsoft adCenter Blog

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance News: Yahoo! Advertisers Will Begin Transition Soon

SEM Intermediate Series: Simple Uses of Dynamic Text in Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns

Back to School PPC Optimization Tips, Research and Downloadable Keyword Lists

Bing UK Summer Ice Cream Giveaway Photos and Fun Stats

Nice little video which tells the story behind the Search Alliance plus Microsoft and Yahoo’s commitment to our advertisers.

Q&A: Microsoft Advertising’s Mel Carson on building communities

Super-chuffed to have been asked by Jake Hird at Econsultancy to contribute an interview to their blog. I’ve known him for a while now and am always impressed with his industry knowledge, and the way he spreads such great and useful insight on Twitter etc…

Just happened this way, but an interview with Bas at State of Search went live about the same time – A summer interview with… Mel Carson (@melcarson): “Discoverability + Shareability”

Last week, I did a radio show with him and Roy in which we talked about a whole load of digital delights.

Others:

Media Week

Bread Demographics

Microsoft Advertising Blog 

Get Great Digital Ideas from our US and EMEA Creative Showcase

Test Your Digital Quotient in our Asia Advertising Competition

New Digital Research: Consumer Multi-Screen Study from Microsoft and Wunderman

TED Talks @ Cannes – Two Online Now

Video: The Future of Advertising is Here – Kostas Mallios – Digital Showcase NYC

Microsoft adCenter Blog

Celebrity Video from Dougray Scott’s Leuka Charity Golf Day Sponsored by Bing

Microsoft Starts Testing on Yahoo! in Mid-July

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance News: Editorial Guideline Updates (US and Canada)

New Video from the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance: what does it mean for you?

Enjoy!

Promised I’d keep this up!

Microsoft Advertising Blog:

Video: Viruses Make You Ill – Joshua Green – Digital Showcase NYC

Cannes Lions 2010 – A Digital Reflection

Join us for a Social Media Party with IAB UK in London

Microsoft adCenter Blog:

Conversion Tracking: What It Is and How to Enable and Disable It in Microsoft adCenter

UK Bing Search Buzz: Touchy Feely Technology to Get Excited About

Lyrics on Bing: Awesome Experience for Music Lovers and Potential Opportunity for Advertisers

Media Week:

Nothing!! Must get onto that….

The Wall UK:

To Comment or Not to Comment – what makes a good blog?

Here are some memories/highlights/milestones:

5 years ago – I got up early  – 4am – dragged myself to Waterloo, and caught the train with the fabulous, and now newly married, Nitin Hegde, to Paris where I witnessed the first ever ad go live from adCenter on MSN.fr. I then spent the next 2 days working with my colleague Clea Blockey, to upload Expedia’s French PPC campaign, ad group by ad group, as we didn’t have a bulk upload tool back then.

After 7…………..yes 7 interviews, I had joined Microsoft from 24/7 Real Media as the 1st account manager for adCenter based in London. For the next 9 months I’d work with my boss – Julie Warburton – on hiring and training the acclaimed customer service team we have today.

Very proud of Mark Richardson, Chris Wallington, Ravleen Beeston, Colm Bracken and Lee Blyth for the work they’ve done over the years with that crackpot team.

Dixon Jones – Not in Vegas For a Change

4 years ago – I’d just got the community manager role for adCenter in EMEA. Essentially, I was going to work with my fabulous Redmond-based social media partner – Carolyn Miller – writing PPC blog posts and managing the adCenter forum.

One of the requirements was to seek out authorities in the industry and try and help them understand our business a bit better, figure out where the pain-points were, and feedback any insight to our product teams so they use it to make our products and services better.

I remember calling up Andy Atkins-Kruger and telling him about the new job and he said, “Oh well you much come to Iceland!”

Getting Serious with Viking Kristjan

Now, I knew Iceland was not a top priority for adCenter at the time and there was no way way I’d get permission to go, but Andy said some chap called Kristjan would pay for my trip if I promised to do a cracking presentation. The rest, as far as I’m concerned, goes down as a little bit of career history.

Spending time with Dixon Jones, Anne Kennedy, Shari Thurow, Chris Sherman, Andy, Brian Clifton, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Sara Andersson and, of course, Kristjan, showed me just how amazing the search industry was, how smart everyone on was in it, and just how much work I had to do!

Dave Naylor – Drinking Chianti in San Jose

3 years ago – I was asked by Media Week to start writing a digital blog for them. I’d also started blogging from events and doing a lot of travel, talking about adCenter and search at conferences here and in the US. It was that year I got my British Airways Gold Card because I was piling on the points with trips to San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Toronto and Las Vegas.

Just loved Brett Tabke’s post on conference speaking tips. It inspired me to write one of my own.

Rand Fishkin and Dog about 100 ft from that Volcano!

2 years ago – I set up a Twitter account and Facebook page for me, adCenter and Microsoft Advertising. I had a built a case for us going “off piste” and using 3rd parties – which were sometimes competitor tools – in order to spread our news and insight a bit further.

Thankfully my boss – Jenny Leahy – was opened minded and now we have nearly 20K fans and followers across those accounts that “listen-in” anytime we have something to say.

Interesting to look back on what I said about my 3rd year working on adCenter too.

Can’t Think Who he Means!

1 year ago – I’d just got back from Cannes where we’d taken a full film crew to cover the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Jenny and I just picked up the microphone and went for it, interviewing folks in the street, Microsoft execs and agency folk about the event and blogging about their responses.

It was last year that I ran into a couple of my top 5 career highlights – interviewing Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter and of course Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer.

Can’t show you the last one, but it was showed internally and he didn’t disappoint!

Biz Stone in Cannes

In 5 years I’ve seen us go from MSN Search, to Windows Live Search, to Live Search and now to Bing – much better brand don’t you think?!

The part of the business I work for has gone from MSN to Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions to Microsoft Advertising.

Windows 7 was launched, Windows Phone 7 is just around the corner and Kinect for Xbox 360 means people like me with no thumb dexterity can now compete in the living room. I spent 2 hours with Blaise, the man behind Deep Zoom and Photosynth and worked with the TED guys on TED@Cannes getting exclusive back stage access to the speakers.

Thinking about it, I reckon I’ve been responsible for well over 1000 blog posts across various sites.

But, most importantly………………….. I got married to the wonderful Ashley!!

I’m immensely proud of my time here as Microsoft. I think the 2 minute wrap up video from this year’s Cannes Lions says it all about how well we are positioned in digital advertising, and long may it continue.

When people ask what I do for Microsoft, I tend to say that I do a lot of talking, either online or in person.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t have been able to do my job with out the hundreds of people that have sat and listened to what I’ve had to say.

There are swathes of people who have turned up at conferences I’ve organised, been interviewed by me or contributed guest blog posts, that have retweeted our stuff or helped promote what Microsoft Advertising is about and how we can help marketers reach huge audiences and get a great ROI.

To all those folks…………a huge thank you for helping me do my job!

I’ve singled out a few people below – I may have missed a few though as, Oil of Olay aside, I am getting old!

Dixon Jones, Dave Naylor, Rich Sutcliffe, Gordon MacMillan, Rand Fishkin and Geraldine Everywhereist, Danny Sullivan, Brett Tabke, Ciaran Norris, Will Critchlow, Steve Barrett, Tamar Weinberg, Lee Odden, Jane Copland, Will Cooper, Kieron Matthews, Jack Wallington, Emma App-Thomas, Rishi Lakhani, Richard Gregory, Shari Thurow, Anne Kennedy, Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Andy Atkins-Kruger, Andrew Goodman, Andrew Girdwood, Matt McGowan, Kevin Ryan, Chris Winfield, Dave Snyder, Greg Boser, Jon Myers, Lisa Myers, Bas Van Den Beld, Mike Grehan, Chris Sherman, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Brian Clifton, Sara Andersson, Eloi Cassali, Peter Young, Bill Hunt, Jim Sterne, Motoko Hunt, Ian Thomas, Joost de Valk, Joanna Lord and Kate Morris plus loads and loads of others!!!

Thanks again and here’s to the next 5 years!!

Decided to do this more often as I now write for a number of sites and have different audiences on each.

When I added up last year’s blogs contributions, I worked out I’ve been responsible for over 450 posts on digital advertising over the past 12 months!

Check ‘em out:

Media Week:

Announcing Beware the Big Turn Off

Cannes Lions 2010 – Digital Insights, Videos and Interviews

The Wall UK:

Video: Behind the Scenes at TED@Cannes

Social Media White Paper

Microsoft Advertising Blog:

Innovation in Mobile Experiences – Advertising and Windows Phone 7

Online Advertising in China Insight from Nokia and Procter and Gamble

Standing Room Only: The Rise of Rich TV at Cannes Lions 2010

More next week!

Nick Clegg’s crowd sourcing site has caused quite a stir in this Web 2.0 world.

“We’ve had an excellent response so far, with over 2,205 ideas, 7,419 comments and 18,000 votes in our first day.”

Would like to have found it in the search results instead of mining it through news articles so am doing my bit for SEO – Your Freedom!

Get on it and help make a change!

Bing UK’s homepage today – inspired as it is sophisticated.

The below photo that Ashley took on safari in South Africa last year, will be me from about 7.30pm tonight.

I may now have American family, but when it comes to sport……