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MSN Takes on Google AdWords

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the game-is-on dept.

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.""

4 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Pay-per-click? by ChrisF79 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have Adsense on my small site and what is frustrating for me isn't the earnings but the lack of consistency. Sometimes I'll have one click that pays more than the 15 clicks the day before. It is very hit or miss with Google. I'd love to see MSN provide a more consistent income stream or at least something I can understand. I see how people bid on the ads and so they're clearly going to have different earnings, but the disparity between them really astounds me. Just my $0.02.

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  2. Whoa, whoa, hold up now. by Pichu0102 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    Does this mean that people logged into their .NET Passports will have the data taken from the passports in order to serve more relevant ads? If so, does this mean that web site owners will have the ability to look and see what data the .NET Passports hold?

  3. Re:I use AdWords on a few websites... by mat1t · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Surely you don't want to switch, you want to use both! Thereby increasing the amount of adverts your product has! :)

  4. One way that MSN can beat adwords by wackysootroom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Adwords used to be a great thing for small-time advertisers and that's precisely the reason that myself and many other small advertisers like me used adwords. I could reach thousands on a budget of less than $100 a day.

    Google changed their minimum-bid policy and now I have to end up paying $10 a click for some keywords and no less than $1 to get on the first result page for others. I used to get up near the top for less than .20 on many of my keywords. Not anymore. I can't afford $5-10 a click so I cancelled my adwords campaigns. Judging by some of the angry threads at webmaster world I'm guessing that there's hundreds of others out there like me. Maybe Google just needs something to show for thier inflated stock price.

    If MSN can offer a decent amount of quality traffic for a good CPC I'll jump all over it.