http://www.myspace.com/superbowlads

Trust me to be in a cab on the way to the airport when I get an email from Steve Ballmer with the news! (82k other Microsoftee’s got the mail too, not just me )

Anyway – Dixon Jones was straight on it!

How do I feel? Well I called a couple of guys to have a chat and we’re really pleased – it it all goes through. It’s been an incredible journey for the last 2 1/2 years, we’ve spent a lot of time and energy on adCenter and even more on our customers.

People have noted how things have changed for the better since we’ve come to market, and it’ll keep getting better as, if this deal comes off, we integrate the businesses and continue in the vein in which we started.

Advertiser’s, publisher’s & marketer’s needs are at the heart of what we’re doing here!

I love this industry!!!!

Right! Flight’s boarding….gotta run!

Check out the Microsoft inside scoop from James Senior who’s just met the guy!

Bill Gates was in town yesterday for a whirlwind trip which included a meeting with Gordon at No 10 and a stint at the IOD. This was his last visit to the UK as a full time Microsoft employee.

You can see what he has to say to the Institute of Directors World Leader Lunch which includes a very candid 40 minute Q&A!

Highlights:

• Pace of innovation over the next 10 years quicker than the last 10
• The way we read newspapers will change and we’ll see delivery of TV over a personalised channel
• Whythis change? Exponential growth in efficiency of hardware and storage capacity is fueling us to be more ambitious
• Computing has become a tool to equalise the small business with the large business.
• Huge democratization from having the internet as a tool to market your products and services.
• Microsoft’s $6b in R&D – devices will become a lot smaller and powerful and all will connect to the internet.
• What does this mean at the consumer level? Messaging & search will get better but it’s the knowledge workers that will be empowered in a more efficient way, helping maximise productivity.
• 75% of training is now done using video at Microsoft.
• We need to unify phone, computers, internet and TV. The “internet with software” will get bigger, enabling different sorts of communication channels, reducing cost and complexity allowing more capability.

He also does a demo of Microsoft Surface!

Dennis Mortensen has posted on his VisualRevenue Blog that “Microsoft is the best converting search engine today!”

He “conducted a study on 15,014,924 visits across multiple global commerce web properties in Q4 2007, with approximately USD 1.2 Million in Paid Search advertising spend.”

This Independent research backs up the study we did last year with NNR which concluded that Live Search would convert 70% (actually we revisited it and it’s now 80%) higher than than other search engines on average.

Net/Net – Although the traffic from Live Search may be lower than on Google and in some cases Yahoo! it still pays to advertise on adCenter from an ROI perspective.

And if you want more high quality traffic, how does 20m unique users and 330m pageviews sound?