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There is not a great deal of news yet on the MSN adCenter blog, though the team there promises to discuss the latest goings-on with the newest competitor to AdWords and Overture.

Carolyn from the adCenter group posted about a new release forthcoming from MSN. Those advertisers who are part of MSN's testing process have been providing feedback to MSN about adCenter. Some of those concerns should be addressed with the new release.

Campaign management looks like the focal point for MSN's latest changes, as detailed on the site:

Updates include:
1. Order creation process simplified into 4 steps
2. Broader differentiation between campaigns and orders
3. New pricing tab includes all budget, bidding, and incremental pricing
4. Negative keywords can be applied at the order level
5. Keyword / ad rejections include reason codes
Other changes will be part of the update; those changes and a date for the new release should be posted on the blog later in the week.

Microsoft is borrowing from Google's practice of opening new blogs for its various services. The practice of blogging as public relations gives the teams for those services an easy way to communicate with their users. The posts and the subsequent syndication of those posts over RSS feeds give users a choice in receiving those communications.

That feature combination has led to much evangelizing of RSS as the potential replacement for email as a marketing medium. But RSS has a very low rate of adoption now, believed to be in the 4 to 6 percent range of Internet users. That range has to increase dramatically before RSS becomes a true alternative to email promotions.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.