Microsoft Sees Phenomenal Web Ad Growth In Its Future

Here’s something to chew on: Microsoft wants to spend the next three to five years growing its online advertising market share by more than 300%.

What can you really say to such seemingly irrational ambition? Good luck, I suppose.

But really, if we’re honest, would it be right to expect any less pompous a plan to spew forth from Redmond? Considering the company’s history of public statements and prognostications, this memo seems like the kind of the thing they reflexively put out there, offering something for everyone to ponder. It’s not like Ballmer is one to stand large upon his pulpit and chart a future of growth only proportional to the greater industry. He and his people want more, naturally, and they’re going to say so. 100% growth? Come on. 200%? Not good enough, folks. 300%? Sure, why not.

Now, Ballmer knows very well that if he were to speak aloud his true wish – which is to have Microsoft race ahead of Google, you know, tomorrow – he’d be lambasted for losing hold of any sense of reality. The press would have a good laugh. Serge and Larry would have something to joke about Thanksgiving evening. The whole world, generally speaking, would be going hardy-har-har for days, even weeks on end. Because everyone – yes, even big boy Stevie B. – knows that that just ain’t gonna happen. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next year.

And unless we see a great big fat porker literally take flight between now and 2012, such a change in the placement of the two tech rivals (though it’s really Yahoo! vs Google that’s been the Web ad challenge at center stage for many seasons now, not Microsoft vs Google) simply isn’t in the cards in the foreseeable future. Sure, maybe by some fluke or some disastrous turn of events in Mountain View will Microsoft really have a shot at catching up to the Adsense network and its super-fast growth rate. But the likelihood of such a dramatic shift is extremely slim. Too slim to seriously postulate at present.

Microsoft has for many years harped quite enthusiastically about its online advertising business. It claimed to have the wherewithal to match or even surpass Big G at numerous points in its post-millennial history. Yet, no dice. It hasn’t followed through. Ever. And not because it didn’t try. It did. Sort of. Only, advertisers logically chose to continue to go where, on the whole, they were promised the best bang for the buck. Which was, very obviously, Google. And now that Google has made itself into the undisputed king of the hill, it’s really effing hard for those further down the slope to climb up to the top.

So this 300% growth prediction of Microsoft’s? Yeah, they talk the talk. It’s the way they operate. But I’ll be thoroughly shocked if they come anywhere close to where they purport to be headed. This message from Redmond of its presumed Web growth to come is hot air, plain and simple. Something to feed the wolves in the media to keep MSFT in the headlines – and maybe budge the stock a few cents north. That's all. Same old, same old.

Do you think Microsoft’s ad plan’s a long shot, too? Do you consider it feasible? Very possible? Let us know in the comments below.