Microsoft's next advertising frontier is the biggest: television.

Microsoft's next advertising frontier is the biggest: television.

On Tuesday Microsoft announced the acquisition of Navic Networks, a company that makes technologies for presenting targeted, interactive ads on digital cable. That's for sure the Microsoft's first big step into a traditionally offline medium.

Throught Navic, Microsoft has now access to technology that allows enhanced commercials designed to be engaging and interactive, along with more efficient placement of targeted ads. Indeed Navic doesn't focus on the standard, one-way TV ads that viewers are increasingly avoiding with their remote controls or digital video recorders because they want allow advertisers to place television commercials in "near real time". Using viewership data gathered from digital set-top boxes, as well as additional demographic information, Navic can craft a more finely tuned picture of what and when people are watching, then serve relevant commercials.

Targeted, interactive TV commercials could ease some of the pain broadcasters are feeling as consumers spend more time online, and as advertisers shift their spending to digital media that can accurately track and tune their audiences. I'm sure that aQuantive — the digital-ad company Microsoft bought in 2007 — has been working on advertising for video-on-demand...to become Microsoft ready to run this new kind of business.

Navic will become part of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. With this acquisition, Microsoft is following its biggest advertising rival into television advertising. Google launched Google TV Ads in April. That program helps advertisers create commercials and design campaigns to run on more than 90 channels nationally. It follows Google's auction-based model, in which advertisers bid the maximum they're willing to pay to reach a certain audience.

For sure this is a new interesting step of merge between Tv and Web.