Forty-something Tech Entrepreneur, Five Children, Not Available.
Why does Live Messenger think I need a date? Does it know something that I don’t know? You see, I’ve been happily married for twenty years, as of today (yes, today is our anniversary!), and haven’t been part of the dating scene since my early twenties.
So why does Live Messenger persist in serving up LavaLife advertising to me, telling me that thousands of singles, just like me, are waiting to meet me? Why is there a persistent LavaLife tab on the Messenger window? Old world advertising model, right? So it would appear. Just push enough advertising at enough eyeballs and sooner or later someone will click on it.
Except that Microsoft knows that I’m 42, married, and only interested in using Messenger for business networking. That data is part of the profile info I filled out when I signed up for Messenger. They just don’t do anything useful with that information. In fact, Messenger can probably detect that my network connection is in Palm Springs at the moment. By comparing that location to my home location (also in my profile),  it could infer that I am here on business or a vacation, and offer up advertising for local restaurants and site seeing.Â
Messenger is crying out for some relevance engineering. Microsoft could do a much better job for their advertisers, and their users, by targeting the Messenger Live experience better. Microsoft might find that they have more advertising slots available to sell if they targeted the advertising better, advertisers might get better results and be willing to pay a higher CPM, and users like me might actually click on advertising relevant to our specific interests.
In the meantime, I’m heading out for a special dinner this evening with the best, and only, date I’ve had in over twenty years.
