Microsoft is playing catch up in the search engine advertising arena by coming out with their own competitor to Google Adwords and YPN today, says iht.com (emphasis mine):

The most significant advancement in the new advertising system is its ability to direct ads to viewers according to demographic characteristics, as well as by the day and time the ad is shown. Microsoft will start using the system to sell ads on its Web sites in Singapore and France. It will phase in the system in the United States starting in October.

Singapore and France first? What? If this is accurate, then why would they test this out there first?

The description above doesn’t sound like contextual advertising to me, more like IP targeting. For example, any search for locksmith would turn up local locksmiths as prominent advertisers/results. I thought they were already doing this? Using IP address as a means of location targeting is flawed. Users can be using proxies and anonymizers that throw off all the IP-to-region/city database algos. So will they be using cookies or .NET/Passport demographic info? User consent? Don’t think so in today’s privacy conscience web. So where/how will MSN determine this demographic information?

In a New York Times article Google points out that they don’t have to use demographic data: “… because Web searchers can directly indicate what they may want to buy through their search queries.”

Without actually seeing the program (no link available as of this writing) it’s difficult to speculate on what they will doing that is different and/or new. Heck, I would be happy with MSN doing an Adwords clone to see how they could compare on a like kind/quality program. Competition helps keep other similar programs in check. For without Firefox success, I’m not entirely convinced there would have been life pumped back into IE development.

As a publisher, I’m all for competition on this front. Welcome MSN.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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