VIDEO: Microsoft's Jason Scott on Asia and ad measurement

Having just relocated from Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters, Jason Scott says that the Asia-Pacific region is top for most global CEO’s in terms of where they see the most opportunity for growth. In his previous role, Scott was charged with setting up global partnerships, where before there was no established sales channel into the major holding companies.

“The fun part was dealing with the media agency guys, and being at HQ in the alphabet soup of Microsoft, with the programmers and the R&D guys. We were able to have sensible discussions with the holding companies, and having sat in those meetings for the past two years, this region is top of the agenda for where they see growth.”

Scott says that apart from setting up sales channels, Microsoft has been developing ways of making the agencies’ lives easier with software like Pivot.

“There’s a huge amount of data going into the agencies, that has to be processed and analysed.”

Looking back to his own agency days, Scott laughs at the amount of print-outs they used to have to handle, which would take up entire corridors of space.

“Agencies need to get real value from all the data, to understand trends and find patterns, which data visualisation software helps facilitate.”

Asked about digital advertising versus traditional advertising, Scott feels it’s outdated to separate the two.

“We shouldn’t talk about digital advertising, we should be talking about advertising as a whole.”

He says consistency of measurement and transparency are issues that need to be addressed by the entire ad industry.

“Clients are looking at different models of remuneration, which makes transparency even more important.”

Scott adds Microsoft is helping support the establishment of strong infrastructure, working with industry bodies like the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and educating the market via major events like Spikes.

“I see this period as the end of the beginning (for digital advertising), we now have enough information at our fingertips. Three key parts to this are embracing our learnings, in-market education, and building a robust marketplace.”