April 27 , 2010

MSN.ca officially named top portal home page in Canada

Ranks number one in unique visitors

Microsoft Canada Co. announced that MSN.ca is Canada’s number one portal home page in the country. In just six months, after ending its collaboration with Bell Sympatico, the MSN Canada Home Page reached 12,813,000 unique visitors and tops the list when it comes to total time spent on a portal (comScore February 2010)*.

The number of unique visitors to MSN.ca demonstrates its popularity amongst the Canadian population. Canadians are more highly engaged online than any other nationality (Context Matters II)**. In fact, Canada outpaces the world in online hours, online searches, and average usage days. With seven out of ten Canadians online – a higher ratio than in the U.S. -- now more than ever, marketers gain a return on investment from digital advertising.

“We couldn’t be happier about the portal’s performance, particularly since advertisers are already delivering strong ROI with how MSN.ca  targets highly engaged consumers in both English and French,” said Marijke Waddell, Vice President of Microsoft Advertising. “With more than half of the online Canadian population engaging with MSN.ca, our advertisers are leveraging creative ways to deliver a value exchange with this vast audience and their brands, including ways of effective storytelling across MSN.ca, Bing.ca, Windows Live, Xbox Live and mobile.”  

From breaking news to the latest celebrity gossip, over half the time Canadians go online for communication and entertainment.** As one of Canada’s premium online destination for news and entertainment, MSN.ca provides access to a new MSN music store, HD video, exclusive columnists, local and regional news, entertainment, MSN guides, blogs, reviews, photo galleries, and more. Additionally, the portal offers a wide variety of channels with media outlets including MSNBC, BBC, Delish, CBC / Radio-Canada, Chatelaine, and Protégez-vous, to name a few. Brand marketers benefit from the exclusive opportunities and digital advertising available on these unique properties.

MSN.ca is powered by Microsoft Advertising, a digital platform that connects marketers with ideal target audiences and the right advertising technology – across the PC, mobile phones, in-game and on the Web.