I work in the “Paid Search” division within OSD. We are the team that fuels the monetization for Bing Search and now Yahoo search as well. Microsoft’s paid search advertising, aka adCenter, provides an advertising platform for search marketing advertisers to reach to users who are searching for their products.  Search Engine Marketing is projected to be over $25B/year market in the USA in 2011.

Within the adCenter product, I am a Sr. Product Planner within a group called APS (Advertiser and Publisher Solutions). Product Planners develop business strategies on which search advertising products are built. My main focus area is the core monetization engine where products to predict user’s behavior, run online auctions among advertisers and price all the ads that are display, are developed.

 

To be honest, my previous perception of Microsoft was of a company where things are much less dynamic. I imagined Microsoft to be a sort of a software manufacturing company where everybody’s role is highly pre-planned and orchestrated based on rigid long term software release cycles. However, when I joined the OSD group, I found that notion to be completely untrue. I found that this group is as much dynamic, if not more, as Yahoo (my previous employer) or any other company I have worked for in the past. I have worked in start-ups before and sometimes things get so dynamic here that it reminds me of those start-up days. I love the fact that we can be innovative, agile and can influence the course of development of a global product like adCenter each and every month.

 

APS runs a one of the most complex business there is – there is no question about it. Online search marketing is not only the most emerging and dynamic form of advertising there is, running this business globally is not for the faint-hearted.  The fact that Microsoft has shown tremendous success in this market despite of only being 5 years old in this business is a testament to the smart people who work in APS. What I like most is working with such a smart group of people; economists, scientists, software architect, engineers, on a day-to-day basis. Now there are only two companies in the world that are capable enough to provide a search advertisement solution in the USA and worldwide and working for the APS team makes me give me this very unique opportunity to be in the forefront of shaping the development of the product.

 

I was born and brought up in eastern part of India, Calcutta. I moved from Southern California to Bellevue for this job. To my surprise I find that there is a very large Indian community here and all my favorite food is much more easily available. I love camping, hiking and kayaking and there too, I am glad that I moved here because this place is practically overrun with trails and lakes. I have training in north Indian classical music. Although the training is currently paused because of the resent relocation, I hope to pick it up again very soon!