Search Engine Strategies 2007: Microsoft lifts veil on AdCenter search tools

 

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By Steve Malone

Posted on 15 Feb 2007 at 11:32

Despite a relatively slow start compared to rivals Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft has come out fighting with plans for a new generation of tools for its AdCenter contextual advertising service.

Demos of the latest thinking from Microsoft AdCenter Labs were being shown at London's Search Engine Strategies show.

'We want to share our thinking and get feedback from as many people as possible,' said James Colborn, Microsoft's Product Manager for AdCenter.

One of the most interesting AdCenter-related tools on display to the search marketer is commercial intention detection, which Microsoft claims can analyse the keywords typed into a search engine and predict how near someone is to making a purchase - whether they are still at the research phase or ready to flash their credit card.

The company is also working on a kind of video image map that moves in real time. For example, when someone in a video drives along in a particularly nice looking car, by hovering over the car with a mouse, the system will display what the car is, where you can buy one and how much it will cost. Microsoft says they expect live trials of the service in the spring.

The much touted demographic profiling built into AdCenter will also enable customers to produce ads before certain groups by location, sex and age, initially. The information behind this will come from anyone who logs in to Microsoft Passport, which is anyone who uses Hotmail or Messenger or who has garnered a Microsoft Live ID within the previous 30 days.

Of course, the other search engines are scrambling to deliver demographics too and suddenly all this free software they have been throwing at us over the past year makes sense.

However, there have already been some issues in the US, where advertisers are saying that while the targeting delivers better-than-normal results, there is a lack of inventory.

Colborn admits the problem and says that expanding the number of Passport IDs is not in his job description.

While AdCenter has been live in the UK since last August, the Content Ads - contextual text ads appearing against Microsoft properties such as MSN - have only just started appearing in the US. Colborn predicts that we won't see these ads appearing in the UK until the spring, following 'three to six months aggressive push' in the US.

At some point the Content Ads will be opened to third-parties rather like Google's AdSense programme and Yahoo's Search Marketing.