With its Engagement Mapping concept, Microsoft tries to go beyond the current "last ad clicked" standard that has been widely accepted in the last ten years. According to the software company, Engagement Mapping take into account all the various online touchpoints and interactions a consumer experiences before an eventual sale.

"The 'last ad clicked' is an outdated and flawed approach because it essentially ignores all prior interactions the consumer has with a marketer's message," explained Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the Advertiser & Publisher Solutions (APS) Division at Microsoft, at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) Annual Meeting in Phoenix.

Quite often, a consumer may view an ad and not click it. Instead, later on he could perform a search inspired from the message transmitted by the ad.

McAndrews said that Engagement Mapping will track every detail about how an ad exposure has influenced an eventual purchase.

Based on this concept, Brian McAndrews introduced Engagement ROI, an online campaign reporting and optimization solution that will undergo testing by national advertising clients and agencies.

The program is designed to allow advertisers and publishers to manage their campaigns with greater insight and control than previously available through third-party ad serving, McAndrews explained. The beta phase of the program will begin on March 1st and the first results are expected are expected by the end of the second quarter.

Microsoft’s move follows after the company acquired during last year the digital marketing firm aQuantive for 6 billion dollars in a bid to prevent Google's total domination of the online advertising market.

aQuantive, which was founded in 1997,  includes three primary brands: Atlas, that provides a set of advanced tools for both advertisers and publishers, DRIVEpm which provides services to publishers and advertisers that match advertiser campaigns with publisher inventory and Avenue A|Razorfish, one of the largest interactive ad agencies in the world.