Singapore – Microsoft, which has multiple consumer properties such as Microsoft News, MSN, and Outlook.com, has renewed its global contract with Xandr as its sell-side (SSP) and demand-side platform (DSP) for expanding and diversifying its ad space inventory and augmenting its marketing spend, respectively.
The renewed contract is an extension of over ten years of partnership with Xandr. On the sell-side, Microsoft will be extending its use of Xandr’s sell-side platform, Xandr Monetize. It aims to widen its monetization strategy, focusing on increasing Microsoft’s unique audiences for advertisers across premium display, video, and native supply in more than 100 countries.
“We always seek to align our partnership opportunities to serve the best interests of and to directly benefit the marketers and agencies looking to drive growth through our unique Microsoft audience. Our renewal with Xandr, after ten successful years of partnership, extends globally-scaled programmatic access to Microsoft’s audience that marketers rely on today,” said Kya Sainsbury-Carter, VP of global partner sales at Microsoft.
As digital advertising budgets shift to video, Microsoft ramped up video monetization efforts supported by Xandr’s video technology solutions and unique video demand. Initially, Microsoft launched Xandr Monetize with a single video ad format in one market and quickly expanded to three formats and into over 60 global markets.
Those three video ad formats include instream pre-roll, outstream in-article, and ‘BannerStream’ which enables multiple media types to participate in a single unified auction.
Most recently, Microsoft was an early adopter of Xandr’s simplified server-side header bidding solution, Prebid Server Premium. With the technology, Microsoft consolidates its demand for video and native through the tools on Xandr Monetize to enable efficient private marketplace (PMP) buying and providing advertisers a unified path to access Microsoft supply.
On the buy-side meanwhile, Microsoft will be augmenting its media spend through Xandr’s Invest DSP as one of its primary DSPs for marketing campaigns.
Dave Osborn, Xandr’s SVP for North America commercial & global partnerships, said that its holistic relationship with Microsoft is one entrenched in innovation and collaboration.
“We deeply value their continued trust in our platform and team to support formats that are so critical to the future of our advertising business,” said Osborn.
“Microsoft’s international growth on Xandr, across the buy- and sell-sides, and across leading formats like video and native, are critical components of our global marketplace as Xandr builds to support campaigns that span screens,” he added.
In 2020, Xandr joined the Microsoft Audience Network, which serves ‘Microsoft Audience Ads’, the only native advertising solution built by its trusted search platform, Microsoft Bing. Xandr has integrated premium third-party supply in the network, giving buyers the ability to target Microsoft’s unique audiences at scale across premium international native supply through Xandr Monetize.
