December 3, 2007

Can Better Tools Make Up for Less Traffic for Microsoft?

The old saying goes that it's not about quantity, but quality. Can that be true for search marketing as well? Microsoft is hoping that new tools it's launching today at Search Engine Strategies Chicago will allow advertisers and webmasters to make the most of limited traffic.

In today's SearchDay, "Microsoft Adds More Tools for Search Marketers," we look at the adCenter Add-in for Excel and adExcellence accreditation program for search advertisers, and a new Webmaster Center for organic search optimizers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 7:59 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2007

Microsoft Consumer Intention Tool Rocks!

Okay this has been covered - the various tools Microsoft has over at their lab. But I had a chance to play around with the Consumer Intention Detection Tool and I really like this one.

I does not always give you what you are expecting but then again there are times when what we think should be true sometimes isn't.

Do a search of queries and you see rental has over 98% conversion rate... while other terms like trading drop to around 50%. I think if you have a huge list of words and wanted to start with just a handful I would put them through this tool and run the ones with the best numbers.

Hey you need some criteria for the choice and this is as good as any other.

If you have some comments feel free to give me your viewpoint.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:01 PM | Permalink

January 23, 2007

AdCenter Almost Ready for Prime Time

Microsoft's adCenter platform will get an update in the next 2 months, which will include some small usability and back-end fixes, as well as the launch of a Content Ads pilot. Advertisers gathered in Redmond last week to see the latest demos from adCenter Labs, which we share with you in today's SearchDay, "Microsoft Shows Off AdCenter."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:18 AM | Permalink

December 26, 2006

WSJ Discovers Microsoft's BT Plans

The Wall Street Journal has just now discovered (link for WSJ subscribers) that Microsoft is taking its user data from MSN and Hotmail to target display ads on its network behaviorally.

There's nothing new revealed in the story. Microsoft talked about these plans back in September, and a Microsoft product manager shared more details with ClickZ in November.

This is not being done through adCenter. Behavioral targeting will be available in that platform eventually, and is a key focus of its adLabs initiative.

It's a slow post-Christmas news week, of course, so I expect we'll be seeing a lot of these kinds of stories that are not exactly news. Hopefully that gives me license to blog about the same not-quite-news topics this week.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:03 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2006

Does this MSN Behavioral Search Matter?

Read the latest from MSN about its Behavioral Search, in recent MediaPost interview.

It's interesting that behavioral search produced CTRs up to 76% higher than before. This is still based on whomever signs up for Passport. Call me ignorant, but this seems like a small and maybe even unrepresentative group. Let's say it is better than NOT having a group who self-reports age, sex and even more about their interests. Is it valid to connect the interests and searches back to these profiles for people who don't participate in Passport?

Posted by at 1:28 PM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

New adCenter Blog & adCenter Lab Features

There is a new location for the adCenter blog, it is now at http://adcenterblog.spaces.live.com/ (yea, the whole live.com thing). Also, adCenter labs released updates for some of the tools.

Search Funnel 1.5: This demo will be updated with over 4 million keywords added to the database.
Keyword Forecast: This new demo will display a search term's impression count forecast and demographic predictions in any format: flash, picture or text.

I have screen captures of the Keyword Forecast at the Search Engine Roundtable - pretty neat stuff.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:04 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

What's Cooking in Search Engine Labs

Many of the major search engines showcase the projects they are working on in their respective research labs. Want a peek behind the scenes? Read on in today's SearchDay article, Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:25 AM | Permalink

June 27, 2006

Microsoft Demographics Prediction Tool Interactive Review

We posted about Microsoft Center Labs once again, but this time I wanted to show you, my eight-minute review of the demographics prediction tool at the lab. I created a movie of my running through the tool and uploaded it to YouTube. Now, before you watch the video, keep in mind that the percentages I discussed in the video may be determined as a "confidence" ratio and not a simple flat percentage -- you will see what I mean.

In any case, there is no way that google.com has predominantly a female audience, with a confidence ratio of 1.00 and they definitely do not have an audience of 100% female. I feel that this tool cannot be used by a search marketer without first having more information on how this data is generated and how accurate it is. This is dangerous, in my opinion. That being said, check out interactive review.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:52 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Re-Launches adCenter Labs Again

Been hearing about the "new" Microsoft adCenter Labs tools this week? That's because Microsoft has done another round of publicity on them after initially launching them earlier this month. Our past recap is here and here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:00 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2006

MSN adLab Launches With a Variety of Keyword Tools

MSN first announced adLab back in January, but it has now been made available to everyone (in beta) with a wide variety of interesting keyword tools for advertisers and marketers. They have launched with 11 demos, broken down into areas Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets.

7 more demos are listed as "coming soon", providing a teaser of what is to come, although no timeline is given for when they will be available.

Some tools will definitely be useful to advertisers, such as the Search Volume Seasonality Forecast, Search Funnel and Keyword Mutation Detection. Those in Local Search will want to check out the demo on Local Ads, which ironically uses Starbucks for their opening demo (along with an outdated notation about their Christmas Blend), although you can specify your own keywords.

Some interesting tools, and I am sure those in paid search will be watching closely to see if any of these are integrated more closely into Microsoft adCenter, and how Google and Yahoo will respond.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 6:58 AM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

MSN Launches adCenter Incubation Lab: adLab

MSN is unveiling a new research center in Beijing today that has the the mission of developing tools for its adCenter platform. Called the adCenter Incubation Lab, or adLab for short, members of the new service are to show some of their developments to Microsoft employees during the second annual internal adCenter Demo Fest. More details below in the press release from Microsoft:

Microsoft adCenter Incubation Lab Unveils Global Technology for Digital Advertising Industry

adCenter Demo Fest exhibits leading-edge advertising technology.

REDMOND, Wash. ? Jan. 12, 2006 ? Microsoft Corp. today unveiled the Microsoft® adCenter Incubation Lab (adLab) during its adCenter Demo Fest, an exposition of industry-leading research and innovation in the field of digital advertising technology from Microsoft researchers.

adLab, a joint effort between Microsoft?s adCenter and Microsoft Research, is a state-of-the-art incubation lab in Beijing with a mission to research and incubate advanced technologies for Microsoft?s adCenter, providing advertisers with rich targeting capabilities based on audience intelligence information while giving consumers a more relevant online experience.

adLab?s top-notch group of more than 50 researchers will develop advertising solutions that connect marketers with consumers in more relevant, innovative ways unseen in the industry before now. Today at the adCenter Demo Fest on the Microsoft campus, the researchers gathered to present prototypes of more than 15 of the approximately 40 advertising technologies they are currently working on for long-term implementation, including online advertising solutions, video opportunities, as well as television- and mobile-based-advertising products.

These prototypes hold the promise to change online advertising dramatically in areas such as paid search, behavioral targeting and contextual advertising. Also shown were projects addressing areas of incubation in their earliest stages of investigation, such as ad bar-code readers, social network mining, image and video and large-display ads.

?The exciting work being shown at adCenter Demo Fest and the new Microsoft adLab reflect Microsoft?s commitment to innovation in the field of ad products,? said Tarek Najm, general manager of adCenter at Microsoft. ?The Microsoft team of top researchers in this field is unsurpassed and certain to produce compelling advances that will impact and ultimately change the game in online advertising. With this long-term applied research, we will continue to improve advertisers? return on investment by delivering rich audience intelligence information and enabling simple and complete control over all aspects of the advertising campaigns.?

One of the innovative technologies highlighted at this event was video hyperlink ads, which can detect product items displayed on a television screen during a show or commercial, allowing consumers to zoom into products featured on the television screen and click through to detailed product descriptions and information on where the products can be bought.

The adLab will be headed jointly by Ying Li of Microsoft adCenter in Redmond and Jian Wang of Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, and will consist of a team of dedicated scientists with specializations in the areas of data mining, information retrieval, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, auction theory, visual computing and digital media. Together, this group of internationally renowned researchers have published more than 80 articles on a range of topics including information retrieval, data mining, visual computing and smart devices.

Postcript from Gary

Pam Parker over at Clickz has more in the article: Microsoft Establishes adLab as R&D Center One more near-term prototype, which [MS spokesperson Karen] Redetzki said was coming in six months, was a capability to let marketers target ads by behavioral segments. She added that advertisers would also be able to create custom segments, which would let them more accurately target their prospects. Postcript 2 from Gary Those with an interest in Microsoft research in online advertising advertising might find the following tech report of interest: + Targeted Advertising with Inventory Management (2000) In this paper, we describe how to use a linear program to identify a schedule, based on known attributes of each visitor, that maximizes the expected number of clicks given all of the inventory-management constraints. We present experimental results using real data that demonstrate that a delivery schedule from our system realizes more clicks than a schedule that was hand constructed.

If you're interested in what patents Microsoft has recently applied for that deals with online advertising, here's a list of a few that were filed in 2005. It's NOT a comperehensive list.

Patent Applications

+ Assigning textual ads based on article history Published: September 29, 2005

+ Targeted advertising based on consumer purchasing data Published: September 15, 2005

+ System and method for optimizing paid listing yield Published: July 14, 2005

+ System and method for optimizing search result listings Published: July 14, 2005

+ Methods and systems for selectively displaying advertisements Published: January 27, 2005

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:01 AM | Permalink

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