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Microsoft's Search Engine Marketing Push
Asked why he wanted to scale Mount Everest, famed British mountain climber
George Leigh Mallory famously replied: "Because it's there."
It may seem like Microsoft has scaled every peak, but the software giant is
playing an important game of catch-up with Yahoo! and rival Google in the area
of search engine advertising. If Microsoft hopes to achieve its vision of services-based
applications like Office Live and Windows Live, it needs a way capture ad dollars
and produce viable revenue streams.
That's why Microsoft has spent more than a year honing its adCenter search
engine marketing effort. As a direct competitor to Google AdWords and Yahoo!
Overture, adCenter promises to bring pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to the
next level. The program, currently in beta, is expected to formally launch in
June.
"I know that people using the beta now love it," says Barry Schwartz,
CEO of RustyBrick, a Web service firm specializing in customized online technology.
"The features in MSN adCenter are very, very powerful in terms of demographics."
The ability to deliver fine-grained demographic data -- ages, location, interests
-- is a major leap over the current state of the art, says Nate Orshan, marketing
lead for e-commerce consultancy Bock Interactive. "Currently neither Yahoo!
nor Google can offer the level of demographic targeting that they are offering."
It will take a sustained effort for Microsoft to ween companies away from the
Google AdWords habit. According to a report from Internet monitoring firm Hitwise,
11.1 percent of all shopping and classifieds site visits in December came through
Google, up 28 percent from the year before. Yahoo! Search produced 4.05 percent
of the December traffic, while MSN Search was credited with just 0.79 percent.
Orshan is not surprised at Google's prominence. "It is the first tool
that [merchants] reach for when they starting thinking about marketing their
site. As a consulting firm we are driven by our clients' demands. Our clients
are demanding Google, for the most part, and a little bit of Yahoo! But MSN/adCenter?
Not at all."
That should change once the adCenter program is plugged into MSN. Microsoft
has been contracting with Yahoo! for search engine marketing services, but that
contract runs out in June. Not coincidentally, that's the launch timeframe for
adCenter. "If an advertiser wants an ad on MSN, they have to sign up."
Orshan agrees that MSN alone should help deliver a critical mass of consumers
to the adCenter program. But with Microsoft already discussing things like video
hyperlink ads -- where a displayed product invokes a relevant link -- it's clear
the software giant has set its sights high.
"It's not just a hobby or sort of a side project to them. I think it is
really a strategic initiative that takes aim at the current success that Google
and Yahoo! are having with their pay-per-click marketing. If it works the way
it is advertised, [adCenter] should one-up them."
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.