Microsoft looks to monetize SEC filings with advertising

The Redmond company announced Thursday that it had penned a deal with financial data provider EDGAR Online to bring the reports to its service.

While EDGAR will supply the actual data to MSN, Microsoft will present those reports in context along with advertisements from its own network. The revenues would likely then be used to balance out any expenses for bringing the content to its users.

The new functionality will launch later this year. The deal may not be all that surprising, considering in March, EDGAR Online plans to switch over its Web advertising to Microsoft's adCenter system.

Among EDGAR's pre-existing customers are Yahoo, Google, Forbes, MarketWatch, CNN Money and Smart Money. It was not immediately clear if its new partnership would affect those other providers, if at all.

EDGAR Online has already done work to make SEC filings more easier to search and browse, using something called Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL. About 12,000 companies are already tagged in the company's system.

XBRL is based on XML, and is used to help readers of these documents understand better what the data therein means, and how it relates to each other. Supporters say this would make it easier for analysts to pore through the data and implement it into financial analysis software, and so forth.

Furthermore, the SEC is urging companies to adopt XBRL on their own, which means other publicly traded companies could begin to use the system soon.