Its a pretty sweet gig working for one of the most important companies in the world. Some of the most intelligent minds in the world come to the Seattle area to work for companies like Microsoft, Google, Nintendo, Amazon, Boeing and a number of other companies in the Tech-industry that may not be well known, but have done some pretty incredible things over that past years. And I can't help but feel incredibly blessed to have been given the chance to be a part of one.
People who know me well, know I graduated in Advertising and Marketing from BYU not too long ago and leading up to graduation I really wasn't 100% sure where I wanted to be and what kind of company I wanted to work for when I graduated. I tried the agency scene in New York City, I tried the Small Business Marketing Positions available in UT, I even moved my way out of advertising and into Business Development by bringing my personality, passion and skills for Marketing to eBay, but in all cases things just never seemed to work out.
Two weeks ago I began work with Microsoft in Redmond, WA and I can tell this time is going to be different. The circumstances that created this opportunity for me are nothing less than a miracle and the job itself has really come to match the age ole cliche' "The Opportunity of a Lifetime."
I'm working under the larger umbrella of MSN at Microsoft. I'm a member of the US Ad Services team, which means I work with advertisers that Advertise on Microsoft's various online networks, which include MSN.com all the MSN network sites, live.com (Microsoft's google competitor) and a number of other sites. Now the US Ad Services team is focused primarily on search advertising, not display advertising which means that I am not running the ads you see on those pages, but I am running the ads you would see if you used any of those pages to conduct a search and those are the text ads you usually see in the left after a search and the features/paid listings you see at the top of the natural search lists.
Now I'm not working with clients yet, but when I do I will be helping them design their campaigns to get the most exposure for their money. When is comes to search advertising , advertisers will offer to pay up to a certain amount to get their ads to show up after someone searches a keyword. Like if I went to live.com and searched "John Mayer CD" there are probably hundreds of advertisers that are hoping to have their company's name show up next to those search results so they all bid for how much they are willing to spend to get their name up there. The advertiser thats willing to pay the most shows up at the top and the next highest under them and so forth. However, they only get charged for that keyword if the searcher clicks on it. This is the advertising model Google invented and it has taken the internet by storm. (In fact I have been so intrigued by it I have started reading a few books on the history of Google, really cool stuff) anyway I help the advertisers bid the right amount and select the right keywords to spend their money on that will in turn produce quality click-throughs that will lead to sales for them!
There's a lot more to it, like type of advertiser, different budgets and advertising based on content within the webpage its going to not just the search entries, but needless to say it some pretty cool stuff and I actually feel like I'm learning stuff that is going to help me become a better businessman in the future. The cool thing about it is that everybody I work with is super intelligent and very knowledgeable about the industry. It feels great! Everyone says that Microsoft employs the best and now I know 90%+ of the people that surround me really are and I feel VERY lucky and blessed.
