Ballmer At SMX West 2010
Microsoft Bing, search engine optimization |
Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the opening keynote discussion during SMX West 2010.
Now on its fourth year, the SMX West 2010 search engine marketing conference opened its doors this week to welcome attendees from the IT, online marketing and search engine industries. The three-day event serves as an avenue where search industry players discuss proven alternative strategies, update and further develop new concepts and to simply establish new contacts.
Amidst the hustle that loitered around SMX West 2010 even prior to its official opening last Monday, it was the announced that Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer would be attending. This was big news because it will be the first time Microsoft’s CEO will be speaking with the search community at an industry event.
And that he did, even serving as the keynote speaker to kick off the opening of the conference. Ballmer took to the stage to address a room full of SEO professionals and members of the press and sat with Search Engine Land’s editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan for the discussion.
He talked about numerous topics during his opening keynote; some relating to search, some about Bing and still others were just random questions thrown in. Here are only a few of the topics and quotes we found interesting and informative:
1. He explains how the Yahoo partnership’s upcoming plans include ads on the Bing page which would eventually help advertisers and basically anyone who utilizes search.
“At the end of the day, folks understand as well as anybody that the quality of search engines depends heavily on the relevance of the advertising and the relevance of the advertising depends on the density of bids.” Ballmer explains. “The ability to put these volumes together improves the experience for all involved parties. More eyeballs on one campaign. From the user standpoint it means the opportunity to see more relevant ads. There’s also an opportunity to scale, to get more relevance.”
2. When asked if Bing can be #1 in the US in terms of market share, he plainly responded with a “There’s no good answer to this question. If you say “yes” you sound arrogant, say “no” and you have no faith. The answer is “Yes… someday.”
He then says that most people don’t do things aiming to become merely second, but then a fair degree of realism is required.
“It’s a really competitive market; everyone should appreciate and benefit from that fact that the level of competition in search has certainly ramped up in the last couple of years.”
3. The conversation trails into whether Yahoo will survive as a search player.
“For us, the goal is to expand the total amount of searches that are on our platform. Yahoo has a lot of flexibility in the contract that they sign regarding how they go do that. Economically they are still able to compete in the search business.”
4. Despite Microsoft’s aggressive efforts to go after the search market share, the industry has yet to see a significant shift change, a game changer if you will. Ballmer remains positive though, believing that “we’ll get there.” Because the industry is dynamic, he believes that finding the opportunity for game changers will always be there and Microsoft and Bing will continue to make positive progress.
5. Outside of search, Ballmer says that between the seven or eight businesses under the Microsoft umbrella, he’s been working on the ones at the intersection, such as exploring how Windows, Internet Explorer and search should interact. “I’ve fallen in love with real-time search.” he admits.
When asked as to what he found different about going into search as opposed to software products, Ballmer says that he thinks the dynamics of business model competition is “fascinating compared to almost anything on the planet” and that finds the auction/advertiser supported business really simple and beautiful.
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RSpears @ March 9, 2010
