Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will enlist its major advertisers to help the company figure out targeting, measurement and reporting for its new PubCenter platform. It sounds a bit like Yahoo’s APT display ad delivery and targeting system, but the members of Microsoft’s new Publisher Leadership Council are more general than those of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium. The Microsoft council includes IAC (NSDQ: IACI), Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) Online, The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT), Time Inc. and Viacom Inc (NYSE: VIA). Scott Howe, CVP of Microsoft’s Advertiser & Publisher Solutions group, will offer more details about the group in his keynote at the IAB Annual Conference in about an hour. We’ll have live coverage.

—Update: Beginning with something of a history lesson, the subject of Howe’s presentation was “What we can learn from the Depression.” He focused on Sears, Roebuck’s catalog business, saying that even in the dark days of the 1930s, the company was able to realize the wealth of consumer sales data it had. Rather than retrench during the Depression, Sears used that data to expand into the insurance industry, creating the AllState brand. “Behavioral targeting is transformative, even back then and certainly right now,” Howe said.