At the event many of the industry's innovative thought leaders will meet to discuss what will shape the online American advertising industry today and in the future. Based on feedback from marketers and customers, MSN developed a two-day agenda with the theme of Mastering the Medium. The aim is to help the more than 500 attendees identify opportunities to most effectively reach their audiences.

Attendees also will gain insights into MSN's vision and strategy and will have the opportunity to hear and interact with industry-leading speakers in categories such as branding, direct-response campaigns and privacy. Examples of innovative work, best results, trends and accomplishments
that reach beyond the boundaries of today's advertising will be highlighted at the summit to encourage the industry to continue to move forward on the road to mastery.

The speakers at the summit include reality TV guru Mark Burnett, chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp Barry Diller and Young & Rubicam chairman and CEO Ann Fudge. Ballmer says, "Microsoft's Strategic Account Summit is one of the most important industry events of the year for advertisers, publishers and creative agencies. We are proud to host many of the top thought leaders from the advertising and media community, and join them in addressing how to interact and communicate with consumers in new and meaningful ways online."

At the summit MSN also will unveil Microsoft's next-generation online advertising platform, MSN adCenter. The tool is aimed at helping advertisers get higher returns by understanding and connecting to their desired audience throughout the MSN network.

Within the MSN adCenter platform, the new MSN paid-search solution will be tightly integrated with other future capabilities to give advertisers a one-stop shop from which to plan, execute and adjust their online campaigns. The new MSN paid-search solution will provide keyword buyers with in-depth audience intelligence including geographic location, gender, age group, lifestyle segment and time of day. As a result, advertisers should be able to plan more strategic advertising investments and achieve higher click-to-buy conversion rates among consumers.

MSN has stated that it remains committed to working with Yahoo! Search Marketing and will continue to collaborate with it to offer high-quality search listings to advertisers.