Acquisition Project | Microsoft Start

What is Microsoft Start

Microsoft Start is a personalised content and news feed that provides content recommendations based on user's interest. It has tie ups with more than 3,500 digital publishers all across the world including premium publishers like New York Time, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Times of India etc.

Microsoft Start has more than 40+ languages content editions in more than 60+ markets.

That being said, the product still has a significant user potential for mobile users primarily in mobile first markets (where users are primarily connected to internet via mobile device and desktop / laptop penetration is low) like India, Brazil and Indonesia.

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Product Discovery

The company does not spend marketing budget on product discovery. They piggybank on the company’s brand name and has deeper product integrations with Edge browser, taskbar on Windows 10 & 11, Bing.com etc.

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Ideal Customer Profile

User Pain Points

Some of the pain points that people face while using digital content media apps / platforms:

• Ads:
• • Ad frequency: Too many ads spoils the user’s reading experience.
  • Intrusive ad formats: Sometimes it takes the user couple of clicks to dismiss the ad.
• Credibility and trust: In the name of breaking the news first, media houses often do not fact check the news which might lead to propagating fake news and biased news.
• Quality of journalism: Use of clickbait headlines to lure in the users.
• Information overload on topic coverage:
• • Too much information shared around the topic.
  • Similar content packages around the topic.
• Relevance: Search for relevant content i.e. content of their interest.
• • Too much political content.
  • Negative news - people have also shared that news have negative effect on their mood.
• Cluttered user experience: While reading the content, the users are pushed with various content recommendations which disrupts the user’s reading experience driving the users away.
• Notifications: Frequent non-relevant notifications, either it becomes a blind spot for the user or user end up disabling the notifications.

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Competitors

• News publishers (including digital media and TV) - Since Microsoft Start is an aggregation platform, their partners will also serve as their biggest competitors
• Newspapers & magazines - It is the oldest and traditional way of consuming news content
• Other aggregation platforms - Google News, Dailyhunt, Opera News, Inshorts
• Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) - GenZ is consuming news snippets via social media platforms
• YouTube - Usually, all the TV channels upload their videos on YT

Market Size

All the folks of all age groups would be consuming news for the topic they are interested in; although the content consumption medium and behavior might differ from user to user.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Thereby, ideally all the internet users across the world who are connected to internet are potential users for this product.

• Internet users in the world - 7.4 billion
• Desktop internet users in the world - 5.4 billion
• Mobile internet users in the world - 4.7 billion

Microsoft Start Market Penetration

At present, Microsoft Start users are as below:

• Monthly active users - 500 million (10% of the desktop users worldwide)
• Daily active users - 84 million
• Microsoft Start mobile
• • Monthly active users - 10 million (2% of the mobile users worldwide)
  • Daily active users - 1 million

Market stage

With the reach of more than 500 million users and presence in more than 60+ international markets, the product is in early matured stage.

Acquisition Channels

Microsoft Start uses two channels to acquire users:

Internal product integrations​

Being part of the Microsoft ecosystem pays out well for Microsoft Start and they use it to their advantage. Microsoft Start has partnered internally and created deep integrations with some of the Microsoft products like Edge, Outlook, Windows Taskbar, Bing.com to name a few.

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Microsoft Edge being a default browser across millions of users on Windows powered devices, it provides an opportunity for Microsoft Start to push their content offering to these users. Detailed explanation of Edge channel is shared below in detail.

CAC for internal product integrations is LOW.

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Partnerships

Microsoft Start is the largest news aggregator player in the desktop space, all thanks to their strategy of creating deep integrations internally.

However, that being said, Microsoft Start need to build a strong foothold on mobile devices as well. Some of the developing and growing markets like India, Brazil and Indonesia are mobile first markets, i.e. majority of the users in these markets are first exposed to internet via mobile.

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Thereby, presenting Microsoft Start with an opportunity to potential mobile users in these markets.

And since, these markets are ruled by android devices, it is really tough to make inroads onto user's mobile devices.

This is where Microsoft Start explored an opportunity with mobile OEMs, providing them with engagement opportunity with revenue play by powering content on OEM's native mobile apps like weather app, minus one screen, browsers etc.

Although there are lot of negotiation cycles involved to crack a deal but since all the technology and product frameworks are in place, integration takes relatively less time and it is build on self sustaining model with minimum human intervention.

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CAC for internal product integrations is LOW - MEDIUM.​

Microsoft Edge

• About: It is a browser from Microsoft stable which is built on chromium code base with AI integration (co-pilot), enhanced performance and security features. They are the biggest acquisition source for Microsoft Start on desktop.
• JTBD: Like every browser, primary job for which the browser is launched to browse and search for content.
• Product integration: Microsoft Start page is natively integrated within the browser i.e. when the user launches the new tab or page in the browser, the content page is loaded by default.
• Unique value proposition: The content feed is personalized for the user based on their interest; and users can take action to personalize the feed further by actively following the publishers and topics.
• Challenges: Although the product integration is seamless, but there are couple of challenges:
• • It distracts the user from their core JBTD i.e. search
  • Users do not use Microsoft Start as the primary source of consuming news
  • Content personalization: There is a need to constantly improve personalization algorithms to make sure that the user is not overwhelmed with the information overload on the same topic or creating echo chambers
• Potential solution for acquiring highly engaged user is to make them aware of the value proposition i.e. they have access to free news content curated from premium publishers across the world. The messaging would have to be driven by non-intrusive coach marks on the Edge browser.
• • Scope: The coach marks would differ for various user segments, example
  • • Cold start users - Keep yourself updated with the latest information around the world
    • Warm users -
    • • Choose publishers that you trust
      • Choose topics that interest you
    • Power users -
    • • Check out the latest cricket scorecard
      • Check out the latest market trends
      • Check out the latest weather report of your area
  • Opportunity: Medium
  • Confidence: Medium
  • Effort: High, as it is dependent on Edge team

Mobile OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)

• About: On the software end, Mobile OEMs majorly use Android OS and build a custom OS of their own. It helps them in creating a distinction from other mobile devices and market the product based on those features.
• JTBD: Communication and information access are the primary goals, followed by entertainment, productivity and photography
• Product integration: Integrate content feed within mobile devices for the real estate developed and controlled by OEM customized OS. Some of the examples are shared below:
• • Native browsers - Mi browser, Samsung browser, Huawei browser
  • Minus 1 screen
  • Native apps - weather app
• Unique value proposition: Easy access to content feed on the mobile devices without the need of downloading an app
• Challenges: This is a B2B2C model where the content
• • User privacy and content personalization: Balancing content personalization and user privacy is essential as more and more users are increasingly concerned about the same
  • Not all the users are interested in reading and browsing content feed
• Potential solutions for acquiring highly engaged users is to build more use cases for the users to engage. Since the users are not interested in reading the content all the time, there is a huge scope for deeper integrations with various data led widgets
• • Sports widget:
  • • Information on live games,
    • List of upcoming games.
    • Match scorecard of recently concluded games,
    • Option to choose a sport - tennis, football, cricket
  • Weather forecast widget:
  • • Current weather information
    • Weather forecast for the week
    • Sunrise / sunset information
  • Financial market widget:
  • • List of most important market index
    • Metal rates - gold, silver, crude oil
  • Scope: The content is already available with Microsoft Start, however they will need to create APIs exclusively for the partner integration with limited data points and exposed it to the partners
  • Opportunity: High
  • Confidence: High
  • Effort: High, as it has partner dependency

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