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MSN Takes on Google AdWords
kevmo writes "CNET News.com reports that Microsoft's MSN unit launched its own paid-search advertising program in France and said it plans to begin testing the system in the United States next month. FTA: "The system competes with Google's AdWords program and will eventually replace a keyword-based advertising program MSN contracts out to Yahoo. It has a simple user interface and is notable for its use of customer profiling, taking advantage of the data MSN gathers from its more than 9 million subscribers.""
Not to try to inflame any French /.tter, and I don't know much about the French, but wouldn't there be a significant difference between how the French or Americans surf? Like the kinds of stuff they look for, etc.
Just wondering why MS would test-run in France instead of some fixed part of the US.
I wonder if better ad-targeting will mean higher pay-per-click for the publishers? Not that anyone will dare discuss their Adsense earnings, for fear of having their account cancelled.
Despite my normal anti-Microsoft stance on the world in general, this type of information usage is going to happen no matter what we as users want. The worst case is the governments of the world using personally identifying information in similar kinds of ways.
:)
Since I don't think it can be stopped any easier than spam-email can be stopped altogether, I want to make my online profile seem as non-descript as possible. That is to say that I don't want to be part of a 'demographic'. That probably means I'll get lumped in with people that buy things I don't want or am allergic to. This is all the more reason to not use MSN... to avoid becoming a user in a demographic. We don't allow the government to use racial profiling... this is just cyber profiling in my opinion, and far worse that standard advertisement campaigns.
Of course the French will have differing demographic and cyber values than people in North America... we won't be looking to buy white flags
Despite the jokes, does anyone know of software or companies that specifically work to help a user maintain anonymity in the face of this type of information usage?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I would imagine it's sorta like Google, where it looks for keywords. Probably the different services you are signed up through in passport as well. I don't use passport/msn at all, so I don't know how extensive it is, but I'm sure that there's plenty of keywords they can match to you when you're logged into MSN.
Google share price rises ever so slightly
Microsoft taking on Google... first casualty is Yahoo... meanwhile Google fails to notice any impact... 9 million MSN subscribers is peanuts compared to number of people who use google
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Microsoft has had success playing the catch-up game in the past, but I think this time the lag is going to cost them.
While I do agree with your comments about MS playing catch-up, I do think that if they play their cards right they could succeed in penetrating at least part of Googles ad space. MS isn't shy about throwing money where it thinks it'd do them good in the long run. If they started out with a pay-per-view instead of pay-per-click model, or even paid website owners significantly more per-click then it could help them to get more of a foothold.
Personally I'd consider displaying both Googles & MSN's ads on my websites as long as one or the other didn't have an exclusivity clause in their agreements. At least until I got a better handle on which one generates more revenue for me. If MSN's ads turned out to generate more revenue for me then I'd probably switch, but it'd be up to MSN to prove to me that that's the case.
But I'd assert that late entry is exactly their model.
They have a huge war chest of pure cash, so they let other companies (even large and agressive ones like Google) do their market testing for them. They watch how the market responds, watch what goes right and wrong, and then only after it makes sense do they enter the market using overwhelming amounts of money and market position. If all else fails, they end up buying companies that own technology or experience flat out, but there's never any question that they should be in the market, because someone like Google tested it (and took the risks) on their own dime.
Being an innovator is cool and it's why we all love Google, but I wouldn't underestimate how much greater is the advantage of an informed and tested market entry over the first-mover advantage, and from the late adoption of the Internet on forward Microsoft has shown that they understand this too.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
The thing I fear most about google is that it may dominate the online services world and gain a monopoly position. Which is why most people fear it becoming like microsoft (as far as I've seen).
The reason for this fear is two-fold, but both reasons stem from resources.
In my opinion, a company is too powerful when we have the hypothetical situation that if their "IP" and/or physical assets are taken away, but not the talents of their staff, that they could not hope to compete with their previous work.
Or to state it simpler, when the hardware/software + "IP-rights" are greater than the employees.
A good example of this would be when Steve Jobs created Next with some of the best people from Apple. Another would be to imagine microsoft without the rights to the office formats or windows APIs.
In the case of Google I see two things that would/will qualify them in this category.
1) Hardware, the hardware to run a search engine is quite expensive.
2) Ad revenue connections, imagine getting your foot in the door if you are competing against Google.
The question that I pose now is, "Can an open source project, resembling google, have a chance against google?" As long as the answer to that is yes, I have no problem with them. But it is my fear that in the future, the answer will be no. (I feel that google can still be wiped off the 'net)
Maybe the creation of a "Free Services Foundation" may be required, assuming one does not already exist. Where hardware and bandwidth is provided (I suppose sourceforge would be a good example, but it is only a start)
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
MS makes a valid point in claiming that they have a better knowledge of WHO the user is. Having a profile of the searcher helps create better, more-targetted ad choices. That way users see more relevant ads, advertisers get more click-throughs and purchases, and the adserving company gains more revenue. I wonder if Google will use GMail and search history to change its ad targetting. GMail would seem to offer an interesting opportunity to segment users/searchers into psychographic groups that are far more useful than profile data (e.g. age, occupation, etc.)
It would be interesting to do side-by-side searches from two computers used by two different heavy GMail users (or a GMail-user and non-GMail-user) with very different interests (and e-mail contents). It might reveal if Google is using GMail for profiling and changing its ads to suit what it thinks the user might want. One could also do tests to see if prior search history influences Google's ad choices in future searches.
Search (or advertizing) is actually a dialog between the user and the search engine (or advertizer), and the better the search engine/ad-server understands the user, the better for everyone.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"Microsoft is just stealing ideas!" "Google will kick their butt!" "Google is my pal and I'll never use MSN!"
Whatever, the fundamental fact remains that publicly traded companies are not your friend. They are big companies driven by profit and accountability to shareholders. The concern for the individual is ZERO regardless of what cute corporate motto they might have.
The darlings of slashdot won't come to your rescue without profit being involved. Google won't save you, and you're fools to want them to. Apple hasn't fixed the fundamental problems of OSX and the move to intel has delayed optimization and improved performance for months to years, they aren't friends either.
Sure this is a little off topic, but as threads degenerate into flames for on publicly traded monolith and accolades for another, it's important to keep perspective that basically all publicly traded companies are the same.
Google isn't innovating either. They've acquired Picassa, Keyhole and others. GoogleTalk is just jabber repackaged. This community tends to laude those efforts as though Google continues to be a haven of innovation. That remains to be seen. Their innovation comes in repackaging acquisitions and open standards anymore. MSFT just rebuilds what they see, how is it really that different?
the victims are the advertisers and Microsoft in this situation would actually be making more money. if they do catch you, MS still has nothing to lose besides helping advertisers gain confidence in MSN click fraud detection.
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