The sponsored lunch today at Search Insider Summit comes from Microsoft adCenter which included a demo of their new Keyword Services Platform and add-in to Excel 2007.

Stacy Harris:

Feedback from marketers is that traffic is good, but they want more of it. Marketers also want AdCenter to be easier to use.

Natala Menezes is up next and promptly announces Stacy was engaged last night!

Key points for current and future development of adCenter: Quality, Transparency and Simplicity.

What does this mean to keyword research, optimization and analysis? Access to real data, not just graphs including demographic and geographic information. It also means easy to use tools including keyword libraries and an adCenter add-in for Excel 2007 which focuses Keyword research, forecasting and monetization data.

Next up is Zhaohui Tang.

Keyword research is the most important aspect of any search optimization or analytics effort affecting: expansion, monetization, commercial intention, seasonality, synonyms, categories, translation, demographics and others.

Microsoft adCenter Keyword Services Platform: Algorithms to extrapolate new terms from a set and categorical relationships. Server platform offering keyword related services for adCenter but also for 3rd party developers to create new advertising applications.

Demo of KSP. I was sitting at a very bad angle as you can see, so I didn’t get any good photos. While the tool will not be released until early 2008, hopefully the adCenter team can give me access soon to do my own demo and review. Hint hint.

The demo shows Excel 2007 with numerous tabs on top showing a variety of keyword applications that go to the web and bring back the data directly into excel. Keyword extraction, suggestion, search buzz, monthly traffic, keyword categorization, geographic info, demographic info, monetization info (clicks, impressions, avg positions, CTR, CPC). There are also advanced algorithm settings.

The app is cool enough that there are whistles from the audience after the search volume tool is run resulting in big smiles from Stacy and Natala:

Audience: Will there be backward compatibility for Excel 2003?

Natala: Microsoft is working on a web version and the MSFT engineer fellow said there will be a backward compatible version for Excel 2003

Audience: (Gord Hotchkiss) are all the features you showed only for your “head” phrases? How many terms will be returned?

Engineer: Only keywords where at least 10 queries per month. There is also a “generous” quota of query volume.

Natala: It’s also a live database being added to and will grow as time goes on.

Audience: How is the confidence score determined?

Engineer: Long answer, but basically algorithms that give an indication of probability.

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A brief history, Microsoft adCenter was launched in March 2006 in US. It became live in UK in August and in February this year in Canada.

Some of the features that MSN offers its advertisers are remarkable as compared to the ones offered by Google and Yahoo! Joe Griffin at Search Engine Journal informs about the ‘day parting’ feature. Joe explains it as, “ Day parting is when you select the time and days you want your ad displayed. As an example if you sell B2B software you might want to run your ads from 8:00-6:00PM, whereas a real estate agent might be better served running ads from 5:00-10:00PM.”

This definitely sounds like a helpful feature. Even Joe sounds pretty hopeful in terms of Paid Search Technology. Joe also informs about other benefits of opting for MSN adCenter model. The beginners benefits starts with lower bid prices. Microsoft has lower bid prices as of now because of the less number of advertisers. The support offered by Microsoft is also commendable.  MSN asCenter also offers an excellent way to target demographically.

Also, ‘it has just rolled out a new Quick Launch program designed for marketers spending $30 a day or more.’ Adcenter representative on WebmasterWorld informs, “it’s a program where a media specialist can help you get your campaigns migrated over to adcenter. You can fill out this form, and you should be contacted about 48 hours after they receive it."

Read more about user reviews on Quick Launch here.

Just recently Microsoft upgraded adCenter beta site. Joe gives an overview of some neat features. 

• Turning conversion tracking on and off at the campaign level is easy
• The interface as a whole is fast, but you may want to upgrade to IE7, as it pretty heavy on javascript.
• You don’t have to generate reports to export data. It’s real easy to export any type of date with MSN adCenter.
• You can turn on demographic targeting at the campaign level. Here you can select if you want male or female and you can target specific age groups. 
• MSN also offers a budget spread, so you can easily set a monthly budget, turn on the option to evenly spread your ad over the month, and sit back and watch your money go away evenly over the month and not all at once.

Mark Barrera also informs about some more interesting features of the beta site upgrades.

• Directly import your campaign structure from other search advertising programs into adCenter. Update your existing campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keyword bids and match types using a single Microsoft Excel or CSV file.
• Preview your ads on Live Search. Visualize how your ads will show up on Live Search with Ad Preview in the ad list.
• Search within your campaigns. Full text search allows you to easily find ads, keywords, ad groups, accounts, or campaigns that contain all or part of a query string.
• Edit keywords in bulk to simultaneously change settings for all keywords or delete poor-performing keywords from your campaigns.
• Download your adCenter datasets into Excel with one click—making campaign management that much simpler.

Microsoft is actually trying very hard to catch up with Google’s AdWords and Yahoo!’s Panama upgrade. The campaigns with AdCenter are easy and time saving. Moreover, they are cost effective as well. Infact, Microsoft enthusiasts claim that if you start right now you will gain a lot from it. Though many people complain of a lack of clarity and response with AdCenter. It also took Microsoft six months to make AdCenter compatible with Firefox. However, if for a moment we stop comparing it with Google and Yahoo! the kind of features AdCenter has introduced in the past few months have been appreciable.  

Microsoft AdCenter says:
Microsoft adCenter allows you to pay for your product to appear at the top of those searches. It offers advanced targeting capabilities, enabling you to reach the audience you want, based on the keywords you choose. This means your product gets seen by the people who want to see it – delivering cost-effective online marketing and an increased return on your investment. 

Microsoft is definitely putting in a lot of efforts to live upto the claims. If you are a newbie, it might just do you wonders to start your campaigns with Microsoft Adcenter.

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MSN AdCenter Set To Take The US By Storm

So much for the silly theory that Microsoft needed more time with Yahoo and its Overture advertising before launching Microsoft adCenter in the United States.

Remember all those earlier stories referring to the service as MSN adCenter? Forget you saw those references. It’s Microsoft adCenter now. The name has changed, but the service remains the same.

Even if Microsoft still hasn’t changed the name of the service on the MSN Advertising site. Which they haven’t as of press time, anyway. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will formally announce the change at the second day of the seventh annual MSN Strategic Account Summit.

More information came from a statement provided by the company:

Microsoft should also announce the acquisition of DeepMetrix Corp, a privately held provider of Web analytics and business intelligence tools for online marketers and publishers.

DeepMetrix operates the LiveSTATS.biz analytics service. With future releases of Microsoft adCenter, Microsoft expects to deliver new analytics applications as they expand upon the service. Like its competitors Yahoo and Google, Microsoft wants to deliver a one-stop experience for potential advertisers who wish to buy search, contextual, or display ads.

During today’s conference, Ballmer is expected to discuss more of adCenter’s potential beyond the realm of paid search. He and Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president and chief advertising strategist, should touch on expanded advertising opportunities today as they outline their vision for adCenter and how it will work with other Microsoft properties.

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There’s a new competitor on the scene "MSN Ad Center". Microsoft’s pay per click program is called "MSN Keywords" which is the first of several advertising options they have planned.

At the time of this writing the only way to participate in this "pilot program" is by invitation only. Rumor has it they should be going public with the launch towards the middle of this year. If you’d like to be considered for participation you can sign up at …
http://advertising.msn.com/searchadv/PilotForm.asp

If you’re already a client you can log into your account at http://adcenter.msn.com

The program, which is very similar to Google Adwords allows you to bid on keywords associated with your online business and your ads will be displayed on MSN’s search results pages reaching a potential audience of 49 million people every month.

Once approved for the program you’ll need to create your own "ad center" account. The sign up fee of $5.00 will be charged to your credit card at that time.

The next step is to select the keywords you want your ads to appear for and how much you want to bid for each. The minimum bid is five cents. You’re only charged for actual clicks on your ads not for their display. There is no minimum monthly budget. You’ll also find a keyword research tool under the research tab to brainstorm new keywords or check on keyword performance.

If you already use "Google Adwords" or "Yahoo Search Marketing" you can easily import your existing ads and keyword lists. If you need assistance you can use what’s called "Quick Launch" where a marketing analyst will assist you with your account setup. During beta there is no charge for this assistance.

One of the nicest feature of MSN’s pay per click program is the "advanced targeting". You can select the target markets you want to reach (male, female, by age). You also can select locations, specific countries/ regions, even select cities where you want your ads to appear. How about choosing the days of the week you want your ads to run, right down to the time? Yes, you can do it all right here. This is possible due to MSN’s use of "audience data" to better target your ads to the audience who would be most interested in your offer. They call this "Audience Intelligence" which allows you to make smarter decisions when it comes to your online marketing campaigns.

You can also track conversions with their free conversion tracking.

Setting up your text ads is simple following their guidelines. You have four lines to work with:

Title Line (25 characters max, incl. spaces) 2nd & 3rd Line (70 characters max, incl. spaces) 4th Line (this is for your url, 35 characters) For more specific style guidelines see http://tinyurl.com/cevu4 .

For content guidelines see http://tinyurl.com/7ue53 You’ll find a "reports tab" in the ad center so you can keep an eye on how well your campaigns are doing.

You can track click through rates, impressions, and more. If you’re already using pay per click marketing in your online marketing efforts, you might want to take MSN for a spin.

With their advanced targeting you’ll be given the ability to hit your target market with more precision, and expand your reach and online exposure.

For more information visit the learning center http://tinyurl.com/b786r or see the AdCenter Blog for members at http://blogs.msdn.com/adcenter/

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Additional info from:

JenStar: “It will be interesting to see if advertisers find that the profiles are matching the resulting traffic from those sites. And I am sure some publishers will reverse engineer an AdWords campaign to see what demographic profile their own site is, and if it matches what they believe their traffic to be.”

Traffick: “Essentially what this means is an improved functionality for the site selection tool, only applicable to content targeting of the “site targeting” variety. It’s not a major foray into targeting search ads by demographics, then (yet).”

Does this take some wind out of MSN AdCenter’s sails? Well, that’s the power of Google. Once the demographic site selection gets significant usage along with MSN AdCenter, there will be some interesting feedback I’m sure. Seems like a good session idea for SES San Jose.

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Lee Odden is President and Founder of
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marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
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Microsoft’s adCenter PPC ad platform has excited search marketers since it appeared in beta form last year. Why? Because for the first time, we can target searchers by age, gender and to some extent, by lifestyle.

Up until today, adCenter has been an invitation-only affair limited to a select group of participants, but for three hours on Monday, March 6th, from 9:00 AM PST to noon, Microsoft will be holding an "open enrollment" for anybody interested in testing it out. Basically, all you need is a credit card and the willingness to spend $5 to explore the new frontier in search targeting.

Mr. Frog recently got a chance to tool around adCenter’s dashboard, and was pleased by its uncluttered, tab-based layout. Setting up an account and a basic PPC campaign took about 10 minutes, after setting basic geo-targeting parameters and twiddling with adCenter’s keyword suggestion tool.

But the real fun — and it’s certainly worth the $5 price of admission — is in adCenter’s Research area. Here, you can generate a keyword or group of keywords, and immediately see a breathtakingly detailed view of the people that used it in a query. The resulting data can provide substantial insights into who your potential customers are, and how you can design search campaigns to reach them. Some of these findings are downright surprising, including the following:

50 percent of the 72,000 searches made for the term "iPod" in February came from users over 35 years old. A full 10 percent of these same queries came from people over 60. Want to beat your competitors to the underserved, overlooked market of iPod-buying boomers? Bid a little more for this sector, and target it with customized messaging that reinforces what they already know: the iPod isn’t just for kids! In February, 30 percent of search queries for the term "Segway" came from people over 50. Clearly, many of these boomers are investigating Segway scooters not because they’re trendy, but because they might be a substitute for a motorized wheelchair. If you’re selling Segways, you’ve just identified what is likely an underserved market niche that you can target in your search campaigns. Think you have to be over 60 to be interested in classical music or jazz? Think again. In February, 24 percent of queries on the term "Beethoven" were from searchers under 25. And 42 percent of searchers seeking information on jazz trumpeter great Louis Armstrong were under 35. If you’re selling music online, you’ve just discovered a great niche that your competition probably doesn’t even know exists.

Of course, some of the data you’ll find on adCenter reinforces what we already know or suspect about certain products and product categories, for example:

57 percent of queries on the term "myspace" came from searchers under 35, with the bulk of these queries (36 percent) coming from searchers under 25. The bulk of searches on the term "NASCAR" came from searchers between 35 and 50 years of age who were overwhelmingly male, as were searchers on the term "Harley Davidson." 78 percent of searches on the term "beer pong" were made by people under 35, with males outnumbering females by a 2:1 ratio.

These are just a few examples of the kind of intriguing insights you can glean by playing with adCenter’s Research area. Even if you’re not presently running a search campaign, adCenter’s treasure trove of empirical data can inform whatever kind of marketing work you do. Keep in mind that adCenter’s data isn’t flawless (age and demographic data is drawn from Microsoft’s other properties, notably its Hotmail and Passport services, which don’t verify identity information).

Exercise caution when drawing conclusions based on queries that don’t happen often: profiles based on low-volume queries will be far less reliable than for queries in the thousands or millions. While adCenter does provide some profiling data on what a searcher’s "Wealth Index" is, this data seems a bit undeveloped at present: for many queries, the number of "unknowns" far exceeds the number of searchers for whom household income data is known. And adCenter’s "Lifestyle" data is similarly sketchy: again, most searchers are "unclassified" right now, rendering this data practically worthless.

Even with these flaws, the search marketing insight you can get from adCenter is enlightening, and as time goes on and more historical data is compiled, this data will become more valuable in terms of providing guidance for smart PPC search campaigns. Precise demographic targeting is the wave of the future, and adCenter has delivered an advanced platform that’s poised to deliver enormous value to search marketers. If you want to register for adCenter’s open enrollment, visit the following page between 9:00 AM and 12:00 noon PST this Monday: https://adcenter.msn.com/

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Mr. Frog is a leading Search industry visionary. Mr. Frog is a member of the Did-it Search Marketing team which accompanies him to most major marketing conferences.

Advertisers who already have campaigns running on other search engines can use QuickLaunch to transfer campaign information faster.

The MSN adCenter website reports that earlier customer feedback resulted in a number of changes:

New campaign tab provides a snapshot of all the orders you have under your campaign.

Apply targets for your ad in the campaign tab when you create a new order.

You can now research keywords in the same section of adCenter where you build your keyword list.

New percentage-based incremental bidding has been added so you don’t have to learn a new bidding method.

Delete campaigns and orders, even those you have already submitted, to help you manage your account.

City-based targeting now automatically associates a state or region with your selection.

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What it doesn’t show: the prospect of a leveled-off online ad marketplace.

To be honest, it doesn’t look any different from what one sees today at MSN Search. A query for "DVD player" on the adCenter test page and the main MSN Search site returns the same top organic link, three links in the Sponsored Links box atop the MSN Shopping links, and five paid-search ads at the right of the results.

The sponsors and ads on each page are different. Mousing over an ad link in MSN Search shows how it routes through Yahoo’s Overture business. Do the same action on the MSN adCenter search page, and the link goes to MSN.

Barry Schwartz revealed the trick to seeing the new adCenter results. But is MSN entering the online advertising business too late to really capitalize on that market?

Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp offered the considered opinion that search advertising may have reached a plateau, based on the collected reports of several publications on keyword costs and marketing initiatives:

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Well, someone over at the WSJ didn’t get that memo. They went ahead and posted their story Tuesday night. The article reveals – so I’ll comment – details of the demographic data that MSN adCenter advertisers will have access to.

As an SEM, I can tell you that the graphs make for a nice visual display and will certainly help advertisers to achieve better targeting of their adverts, although don’t confuse that with the ability to actively select which demographic your can show your ad to.

Mark Boslet at Dow Jones has some other opinions and speculations. There are still a lot of cool details that will come out over the coming weeks. We’ll keep you posted!

From WSJ:
Microsoft Tests Software Link Of Web Searches to Advertisers By ROBERT A. GUTH and KEVIN J. DELANEY Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL March 16, 2005 The new software allows advertisers to link advertisements to relevant search results. Microsoft charges advertisers a fee each time users click on the ads. Called MSN adCenter, the software eventually will also allow advertisers to access detailed data on MSN users, such as age, gender and "lifestyle" characteristics, helping them to tailor their marketing efforts.

For now, the new functions Microsoft is testing appear to be more advanced than those offered by its lead competitors. Today most services charge fees based on the number of "clicks" on a specific advertisement but provide little information about people who searched on a specific term.

An advertiser linked to "NCAA basketball," for instance, on MSN adCenter could view graphs showing that mostly males age 16 to 60 searched for the term. Such information can be used by Microsoft to tailor its fees based on the audience and move online advertisers from "buying keywords to buying an audience," Microsoft Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said.

Microsoft said it will give advertisers only aggregate data, not the identities of individual searchers. …Already, Microsoft plans to replace search ads provided by Yahoo with its own ads in France. Microsoft executives won’t comment on their plans to roll out the service in other markets.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.