MSN Adcenter
MSN Adcenter is the latest Search Engine Marketing solution unveiled by operating system juggernaut, Microsoft. The single most profitable software business in the world, Microsoft is understandably agitated at its rival Google's meteoric rise to dominate the Search Engine industry.
Microsoft has diverted enormous resources to the cause of search engine marketing. It has totally revamped its MSN search engine, rebranding it as Windows Live. MSN Adcenter has been reengineered by Microsoft in order to be integrated into Live Search. Live Search is now undergoing extensive development work in order to create a more relevant search engine product.
It is widely known that Microsoft's old search engine's search performance was dismal at best. Microsoft admitted the shortcomings in its search engine, and has now invested great amounts of resource and effort into improving the online search experience. The end product, Live Search, represents an integration within the Microsoft product range, including with products such as MSN Messenger(now known as Live Messenger).
Adcenter has the unique ability of being able to pull in contextually relevant ads.
Microsoft is extending upon this ability by including demographically relevant ads. This is something that even Google's Adwords is currently unable to do.
Basically, Microsoft analyses the user's demographic data as is stored in the MSN database, and then integrates it with geographic information in order to output a relevant advertisement in real time.
MSN Adcenter also utilizes the immense power of the Microsoft Members directory. This resource quietly built up over a period of a decade now represents a goldmine in terms of marketing data. Microsoft intends to use this powerful resource in order to excel in the advertising arena.
Adcenter represents a formidable new force in the paid search arena. Poised to compete with both Yahoo Search Marketing (now known as Panama) as well as Google Adwords, Microsoft MSN Adcenter presents a strategic shift in Microsoft's product base. If Microsoft's past performamce is anything to go by, MSN Adcenter is sure to be a massive success!
