AdAge has a short interview with Joe Doran, general manager of Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, on the Microsoft-aQuantive deal…he addresses the potential conflict of interest in the deal: “We do know people could say there’s a conflict of interest between us. We want to make sure all ad agencies understand we don’t want that to become a reality. We’ll operate Avenue A/Razorfish at arms length, make sure they have ability to drive the value for marketers and advertisers and remain independent.”
Updated: News.com has a joint interview with Microsoft platform and services unit head Kevin Johnson and Aquantive CEO Brian McAndrews on the deal.
—McAndrews: If you think of the success AOL has had with Advertising.com, we have that same ability combining Drive with MSN.
—Johnson: As a company we’ve made a strategic bet that we are going to shift more and more things to this concept of software plus service, where we complement our software offerings that run on intelligent devices on the edge of the network with services delivered over the network. Many of those services will be monetized through online advertising.
—On Google-Doubleclick and MSFT’s opposition to the deal on regulatory ground: Johnson: Microsoft has no technology for serving ads to third-party Web sites today and Aquantive’s share of this business, of third-party publishers, is less than 5 percent.