Microsoft's Phones Expand Creative Advertising Possibilities

I apologize for my absence!  I was ill for the majority of March with a quick reprieve in the very middle of the month that allowed me to attend MIX10 in Vegas.  

At MIX, Microsoft announced some very exciting steps towards Ozzie’s "3 screens and a cloud" (phone, PC, and TV) vision. Check out the MIX10 Day 1 keynote about 28 minutes in to take a peek at the Windows Phone 7 Series.

The proposed integration of Zune, Xbox, and Microsoft Mobile Marketplace is what I was hoping for back in my June 2009 article How to Make an iPhone Killer. The integration of XNA (Microsoft’s game framework) will allow for some really compelling, deep gaming reminiscent of Nokia’s N-Gage basically replacing the long-awaited "XBoy". 



I have to admit that I was wrong about "Pink."  Apparently, the project that was codenamed "Pink" is now the Kin phone. The Kin phones came out of Microsoft’s purchase of Danger, the creator of the Sidekick phone. Remember those? So it makes sense that the Kin phones are for a younger audience looking for a less expensive phone with deep social networking support.




Advertising support for the Windows Phone 7at MIX but with the tight integration between the mobile OS and the Xbox Live service, I’ll bet that advertising is top of mind. It’ll be interesting to see how that progresses.

A couple of things I’d love to see as ad placement options:

• More immersive branding theme options like Xbox’s NXE themes and Google Chrome Artist Themes (if you haven’t seen the YouTube video yet, it’s pretty cool!)
• Avatar and other micro-transaction virtual products.
• Foursquare type location-based badges that you can add to your existing Xbox achievements?

With the extension of the Xbox Live, Bing Maps, and other Microsoft services across TVs, phones, and PCs, via a small set of technologies (XNA, HTML, Silverlight, .NET, Flash) advertising opportunities can be creative and exciting. I can't wait!