Microsoft and PPC Advertising — Not Quite a Flirt
         Anymore
         Author: Vince Cordell
        -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly
        Overture) face new competition from Microsoft's newly released
        PPC program, MSN AdCenter.

        Currently, MSN still displays search ads from Yahoo! Search
        Marketing, through a contract that runs until July 2006, but the new
        technology from Microsoft is just a few steps away from being fully
        implemented. In the first phase, MSN AdCenter was put to the
        test in France and Singapore and it was launched to public
        access in Singapore on August 31 and in France on September
        26. The results from the two pilot countries were very promising
        so, apparently, the paid search program will go into beta testing
        in the United States in October 2005.

        Advertisers love the PPC system rather than others because it's
        cheaper and more targeted; they only pay when their ads get
        clicks. Until now the two major choices for PPC were Google
        Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. However, when a third
        major competitor turns up, one can only hope that cost per click
        (CPC) gets cheaper, thus lowering the advertising costs.

        As to what the new service features, the competition promises to
        be tough, especially in the research and targeting tools area.
        The advertisers are able to specify what kind of audience they 
        wish to target by demographics - geographic location, gender,
        age group, lifestyle segment and time of day - and the system
        can provide keywords to be used in search campaigns. All these
        data can be accessed before the advertisers place their ads.

        Even more, it seems that the Adcenter program will provide
        feedback related to keywords performance and advertisers will
        be able to switch to more effective ones during the ad
        campaigns. Eric Hadley, senior director of advertising and
        marketing for MSN, says the new platform is meant to help users
        drive ROI from a search campaign beyond just knowing if 
        somebody clicked on it, but also knowing if someone is likely to
        click on it.

        As for Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, they both
        provide geographical targeting but they don't have demographics
        features. Meanwhile, the new AdCenter platform goes more
        towards customer profiling and behavior.

        Search engine advertisers can't wait to see their keyword based
        campaigns become even more targeted. However, they'll have to
        wait a little bit longer, because there's no serious encouragement
        that the full-scale deployment of AdCenter will be possible before
        the end of this year.
        ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        http://www.adwordshowtos.com is a complete how to guide and
        offers practical advice on improving the performance of your
        Google Adwords campaigns.