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Over the past few months, Microsoft has been trialling the service with a number of its key advertisers, and has now pronounced itself satisfied with the results.

Microsoft now hopes that it will be able to provide advertisers with

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a strong alternative to the contextual advertising offerings from rivals Google and Yahoo!

Microsoft's ace up its sleeve is the demographic targeting AdCenter is able to offer. It enables the company to offer an audience profiler, to provide advertisers with profiles of users who have searched on specific keywords. It also includes a keyword suggestion tool, based on previous popular searches for on MSN, and a site analyser, which recommends keywords based on the content of a site.

In addition, the company is also dangling the carrot of the official roll out of Windows Live Search, which is due to launch at the beginning of September. Microsoft is promising 'rich viewing and organisational tools, extensive search categories (like image and local search), and innovative services' which will attract 'more high quality searchers'.