Microsoft surprised everyone on Friday by releasing their “AdCenter”:https://adcenter.msn.com/default.aspx product to the general advertising public. While the birth of a third important provider of paid search results is exciting, the overall experience at this early stage is somewhat disappointing. Many advertisers are reporting bugs with keyword selection, among other things, and some users are experiencing abnormally long delays and hang times.
h3. Targeting Canadians
The interface clearly allows users to target Canada. However it seems as though the geo-targeting feature does not display the ads only to Canadians, like “Google AdWords”:https://adwords.google.com/select/ does. Rather it allows advertisers to bid higher for canadian clicks than for other clicks. I’m not too sure how well this form of geo-targeting will be received by Canadian advertisers trying to reach a Canadian audience.
Category: Marc Poirier
It’s no secret. Microsoft is dead set on replacing Google as the reigning king of paid search advertising.
Even though their investments in developing better ad serving technology have been unbelievable, their share of the search pie has been absolutely stagnant. I could be wrong, but as far as I can remember, MSN search has been stuck at approximately 15% for at least 3 years now.
It seems they have found a shortcut to topple Google much faster than most anticipated. “According to the Wall Street Journal,”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114662449016042303.html?mod=home_whats_news_us Microsoft appears interested in acquiring search juggernaut Yahoo!
I’m not surprised by this move. In fact, “it was my main prediction for the world of search in 2006.”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/01/09/polishing-the-search-crystal-ball
_This article is by Guest Contributor Marc Poirer._
It’s that time of the year. Again. Time for new year resolutions. If you didn’t already come up with your own, here’s mine: go fishing much more often.
I think everyone in the interactive industry knows that 2005 was a great year for search, arguably the greatest yet. By the looks of things, 2006 will be an even better year with more marketers getting serious about paid search and SEO. Rather than simply try to come up with enough material to write “my own” look back at search in 2005 and predictions for 2006, I decided to bring you a great little list of what has been said on the topic. Then I’ll make some predictions anyway, just for the hell of it.