At the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) launched its new advertising product, DeepZoom, developed at Microsoft Israel's R&D center. DeepZoom uses drag and release technology to facilitate the construction of interactive advertising banners, enable users to view the banners without burdening the webpage or browser, and to obtain additional information without having to go to a different website.
DeepZoom enables users to zoom in on specific content appearing in the advertising banner. The result is that a static banner turns into advertising space with extensive information, including additional text, pertinent video or game content. The user can pick the information he or she wants to focus on and obtain it in higher resolution.
DeepZoom is based on Microsoft Silverlight technology, which allows content providers to directly offer interactive media (such as video) from a website through an addition to the browser. The new tool is basically a Silverlight application for advertising formats that works with display, search announcements, and mobile applications. It also includes analytics data, such as how often user zoom in on an ad or the average time is interacting with the ad.
DeepZoom was developed during Microsoft's "Out of the Box" week, held at the Israeli R&D center every three months. The program's objective is to enable employees, with guests from other companies, to focus on innovative developments, rather than standard one, and to break away from day-to-day work, if only for a while. At the end "Out of the Box" week, employees present a prototype of the product they developed.
DeepZoom is the first product developed at an "Out of the Box" week to reach the commercial stage.
Microsoft says that DeepZoom creates an interaction with the consumer and encourages involvement. Unilever is the first company to use the technology in a display ad as part of a pilot within the next six months. A beta version of DeepZoom will be launched in 2011, which will initially only be available for US advertisers.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 24, 2010
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