A sneak preview of the new MSN adCenter

Following initial trials in France and Singapore, the long-awaited MSN pay-per-click advertising service (called the MSN adCenter) is currently being offered to US advertisers on an invitation-only basis. However, MSN has already provided some detailed information about what the new service offers and we can look forward to this being introduced in the UK within the next 6 months.

MSN’s own pay-per-click advertising service has been expected since 2003, when one of its main search competitors - Yahoo! - acquired Overture, which MSN has a partnership contract with until June 2006. MSN has also seen the revenue potential from PPC advertising displayed by Google AdWords and by Overture and, not surprisingly, it wants a slice of the market. And that slice will be a large proportion of Overture’s market, as MSN is currently one of their main search partners, both in the US and the UK.

So what can we expect to see with the new MSN adCenter? Those familiar with setting up and running PPC advertising campaigns will see a lot of similarities, with the account management and bidding processes closer to Google AdWords than Overture (now called Yahoo! Search Marketing). However, in order to lure advertisers away from Google and Yahoo!, MSN hope to improve on the service the big two offer, particularly by increasing the scope for differentiating market segments and the ability to target those segments more accurately.

This is the main difference and potentially a valuable new tool for PPC advertisers. By using the data from MSN’s numerous registered users who have signed up to Hotmail, Passport and Messenger services, MSN will use this data, when available, to provide demographic data to their PPC search market management and response data. Advertisers can place higher bids to boost their listings if searchers match their selected market profiles and although this data won’t always be available, it could prove useful.

The other main advantage offered by the MSN adCenter is the ability for ‘day parting’, whereby you can stipulate at what time of day your adverts appear, or on which days of the week if these can affect the responsiveness of your campaign. This can potentially give the advertiser much more control over their spend and a greater ability to test the responsiveness of their advertising programme. We expect Google AdWords and Yahoo! to introduce similar features by the end of the year.

The current fees to set up an account with MSN adCenter are a $5 sign-up charge and a minimum bid level of 5 cents. If this level of pricing is offered when the service launches in the UK - and there is no minimum monthly spend level, unlike Yahoo! Search Marketing in the UK where the £20 minimum spend level still exists - MSN will compete with Google AdWords to attract smaller advertisers who may want to test the market or specialise in niche markets where the search volumes are quite low.

We look forward to the MSN adCenter being offered to UK advertisers and we will be at the forefront of test users to track the effectiveness of the service for our clients. To find out more about MSN’s new PPC tool and how this could be used to market your business online, please contact us for more details.