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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.""
What's in it for me to switch to MSN's?
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.
The actual URL to Microsoft's MSN AdCenter:
adcenter.msn.com
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
You know, I am annoyed by the onslaught of Google articles on here, but maybe there are so many articles because they are great innovators. Google doesn't necessarally makes new software, but take an old idea and make it much better, or work in a different way that may or may not be more efficient.
People complain about Google possibly turning into another Microsoft, but I say that may not be a bad thing. Two giants with totally different ideas about engineering, research and design are now trying to grab a hold onto the same markets. There are similarities too; both companies to a lot of live testing with their consumers.
My revenue on google Adwords hasn't been all that great, so at least now if I desired, I could try a different option from a major provider. I like this and I'd hope to see more healthy competition between Google and Microsoft.
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.
>taking advantage of the data MSN gathers from its more than 9 million subscribers
We're not going to be farmed for energy by soulless machines...
We're going to be farmed for our metadata by soulless corporations!
I feel so much better now.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
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 have an adwords account as well, one of the possibilities might be that the MSN market would generate more revenue? Consider that the users who use Google might be smarter than the ones on MSN due to the fact that those people who don't know how to change the default homepage after installing windows might be a viable market to advertise to :)
Microsoft: Who do you want us to copy today?
Microsoft: Innovation Through Imitation.
Microsoft: Developers. Developers. Developers. We are happy with our halfassed developers.
Microsoft: Screw new ideas, we have a monkey boy.
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.
.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?
Does this mean that people logged into their
Good to see Microsoft is still Innovative.
Surprising for such monolithic company to still have new and fresh ideas.
You would think a large company, like Microsoft, would use it position to exert pressure to adopt their services.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
MS needs to be put in their place, and to a small degree Google has been doing that. It will be interesting to see for how long Google can withstand MS's onslaught.
Ignore Alien Orders
Finally, click fraud victim we can all feel good about. .
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
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.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/innovation/
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Maybe I don't pay enough attention to their various projects but it seems to me that Google has been churning out complex projects at, for a large development company, breakneck speed.
Even if most of those projects are still in Beta, all the ones I've tried are very functional and stable. While there are other companies who have similar products or projects that are more functional or establised, Google's ability and flexibility should have them all scrambling to innovate or to defend their market share.
Funny thing is, I've only become aware of a lot of these established competitors BECAUSE of Google's projects. If it weren't for Google Desktop search, I may never have heard of Copernic - which is a pretty darned good program.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
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.
.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.
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
If MSN can offer a decent amount of quality traffic for a good CPC I'll jump all over it.
I probably should have read the fine print when signing up to Slashdot. Now all my base belong to... ah screw it.
(Australian working in the UK, reading Slashdot)
"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?
Well i guess copying is the sincerest form of flattering. Microsoft seems to be flattering everything in sight theese days.
They sure are a flirty company.
HTTP/1.1 400
Who modded this interesting? this is such a troll!!
In advertising, why would it make any sense for Microsoft to make ads IE specific? Advertising is about reaching as many people as possible with relevant ads. M$ are money grubbers, not just power-mongers.
Personally, I hope the parent is right, because the one thing that it is hard for my adblock in firefox to block is the google adwords. If M$ did use active-x that would completely eliminate the problem for me :).
But it won't happen. If you have been reading /. recently MS has been coming out with new AJAX based technologies that work cross platform/browser. Take a look at their new home page previously referred to here on /. I dare say it is a lot nicer than Googles, feature-wise.
So maybe Microsoft is waking up and realizing that if they are going to compete with Google, they are going to have to abandone their "Windows is the only OS" model.
I hope they do, competition is ALWAYS good.
This is just sig!