August 22, 2007

Microsoft to Offer Content Ads to All Advertisers

Microsoft's contextual ad units, previously available to a limited number of advertisers in a year-old pilot program, will soon be available to all U.S. advertisers.

Beginning August 29, all advertisers will have their ads shown in the Content Ads network of contextual ad placements on several Microsoft-owned sites, as well as partners Facebook and Digg. At launch, much of the inventory is in vertical areas like health, technology and finance. More third-party sites in those key verticals are expected to be added through partnerships in coming months. A self-service publisher sign-up similar to Google AdSense is expected to launch some time next year.

Bids for Content Ads will be set at an advertiser's current Broad Match bid for each ad group. If no Broad Match bid is present, the system will look for a Phrase Match bid, and then an Exact Match bid. In this way, the Content Ads will tend to use the lowest bid set for each group. New ad groups will include Content Ads by default, though advertisers can opt out of Content Ads at any time.

The pilot was expanded earlier this year with a new release of adCenter, and included several thousand advertisers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:12 PM | Permalink

July 25, 2007

Digg Goes with Microsoft for Ads

Social media site Digg has entered a deal with Microsoft to sell and serve display and contextual text ads on Digg, and to work together on future technology and advertising initiatives.

"Our collaboration with Digg is about bringing our advertising technology and sales force to one of the fastest-growing sites on the Web and a true innovator in user-generated content," Steve Berkowitz, senior VP of Microsoft's Online Services Group, said in a statement. "We believe advertisers will welcome Microsoft and Digg's combined strengths to forge more meaningful connections online."

Digg's current partner of 18 months, Federated Media, will continue to work with Digg and Microsoft in a limited capacity, "focusing on integrated sponsorships and custom programs like the Arc project in labs," according to Digg founder Kevin Rose.

"Federated Media has unique advertising sales assets that dovetail with our efforts, and we look forward to working with them," Berkowitz said.

Google AdSense ads, which formerly ran on the site, will be replaced by Microsoft-served ads.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:01 PM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Display Your adCenter Ads On Microsoft's Content Ads Network

The adCenter Blog has an open invitation to register for U.S. Content Ads. So if you are an adCenter advertiser and you want your ads to be found on Microsoft's contextual network, you can apply for an invite here. Note, this is not for publishers to sign up with Content Ads, but for advertisers to sign up to place their existing ads on Content Ads. I have already begun testing Content Ads myself. More details on content ads here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:50 AM | Permalink

August 29, 2006

Microsoft ContentAds Inviting Advertisers into Pilot

Microsoft adCenter began inviting selected advertisers into the ContentAds pilot, which is expected to begin displaying contextual ads across selected MSN properties such as Real Estate and Money this fall. The text-based ads, which will be contextually targeted, also allow advertisers to target using both the demographics, geotargeting and incremental bidding tools. For all the scoop, please see JenSense.com

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 5:45 PM | Permalink

June 5, 2006

Windows Live Mail's Active Search: Gmail-Like Contextual Ads Next To Your Mail

Two years ago, Gmail launched with the idea of showing ads contextually based on your email. Soon after, the shit hit the fan, with one California state senator even backing a special anti-Gmail law that failed to pass. Fast forward to last week, with Microsoft rolling out Active Search within Windows Live Mail. Just like Gmail, it will deliver ads based on what you're reading. Unlike Gmail, there's been no privacy freakout that I've seen.

Microsoft's blog post on the new service highlights privacy protections meant to make you feel better. Heck, I was never that worried about Gmail. We'll see if places like EPIC feel they need to maintain a new FAQ about the Microsoft service similar to what they started (but don't seem to still maintain) for Gmail.

Microsoft Adds Contextual Ads Alongside Desktop E-mail from ClickZ has more on the new service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:05 PM | Permalink

May 23, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: May 23, 2006 - Yahoo Wallets, Microsoft Answers, and Google Phrases

A number of patent applications published last week proved intriguing. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO) filings offered us additions to Google phrase searching and predictive queries, some enhancements to interacting with ecommerce sites that appear to be from Yahoo, a Microsoft Answers system and a page location based bidding process, a link-based ranking system from Oracle, and "phone gestures" from V-Enable.

Google

Google Phrase searches could increase the size of the search engine's data base, and an addition to their predictive query suggestions process adds non alphabetical language, and descriptions of filters and meta information associated with suggested queries.

Anna Patterson, who developed one of the largest search engines ever created while at the Internet Archives, and author of the ACM Queue article Why Writing Your Own Search Engine is Hard, is the inventor listed on this patent application, which describes a way for a search engine to index an extremely large number of pages. A related, earlier patent application from her is Phrase-based searching in an information retrieval system.

Documents stored in the primary index described are ranked by relevance and include relevance related information associated with them. Documents in the secondary index are ranked by document number, and don't include relevance attributes. I wrote a little more about this patent application in a post at SEO by the Sea, entitled Google Aiming at 100 Billion Pages?

Multiple index based information retrieval system Inventor: Anna L. Patterson US Patent Application 20060106792 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on January 25, 2005

Abstract

An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. The document index is partitioned into multiple indexes, including a primary index and a secondary index. The primary index stores phrase posting lists with relevance rank ordered documents. The secondary index stores excess documents from the posting lists in document order.

In addition to describing how predictive query suggestions, like those seen in Google Suggest, and on the Google Toolbar for Firefox could be adapted to work with languages like Japanese, this next patent application details some other aspects of how query terms are selected, and mentions meta information associated with those queries, and a number of different types of possible filters. Don't know if the filters described would be used in situations like one Barry mentioned recently: Belgian Company Suing Google Over Google Suggest Suggestions

Method and system for autocompletion for languages having ideographs and phonetic characters Inventor: Kevin A. Gibbs US Patent Application 20060106769 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on November 12, 2004

Abstract

A set of ordered predicted completion strings including strings of ideographs are presented to a user as the user enters text in a text entry box (e.g., a browser or a toolbar). The user entered text may include zero or more ideographs followed by one or more phonetic characters, or the entered text may be one or more. The predicted completion strings can be in the form of URLs or query strings. The ordering may be based on any number of factors (e.g., a query's frequency of submission from a community of users). URLs can be ranked based on an importance value of the URL. The sets of ordered predicted completion strings are obtained by matching a fingerprint value of the user's entry string to a fingerprint to table map which contains the set of ordered predicted completion strings. The generation of the ordered prediction strings takes into account multiple phonetic representations of certain strings of ideographs.

Yahoo?

There are three patent applications not in the USPTO assignment database, but which could be associated with Yahoo. One describes a way to automatically log in to different sites on the web. The other two discuss a "wallet" that may help visitors fill out checkout information on an ecommerce site.

While the published filings are not specifically assigned to Yahoo, a couple of the inventors listed on them have ties to the company. Thomas Joshua Shafron was one of the members of Log-Me-On.com, which was purchased by Yahoo in 1999, and Qi Lu (who is listed on all three) is presently Yahoo's Senior Vice President of Engineering for Search and Search Marketing.

Method and system of facilitating automatic login to a web site using an internet browser Inventors: Qi Lu and Ashish Baldua US Patent Application 20060107217 Published May 18, 2006 Filed December 30, 2005

Abstract

A method and system of adding functionality to an Internet browser interface. In one embodiment of the present invention, the added functionality may facilitate automatic login to a web site using an Internet browser. In another embodiment, the added functionality may enable the user to perform various tasks using the Internet browser such as, by way of non-limiting example, performing various tasks required to navigate one or more web pages, or to retrieve information desired by the user from one or more web pages or web sites.

These next two patent applications describe a toolbar addon and active x controls that could act as a ecommerce wallet, helping someone using a browser by filling out checkout information from different ecommerce sites. There are some subtle differences from one to the other, but much overlap, including the same abstract.

Method and system of facilitating on-line shopping using a downloadable toolbar Inventors: Thomas Joshua Shafron, Qi Lu, Ashish Baldua US Patent Application 20060106680 Published May 18, 2006 Filed December 30, 2005

Method and system of facilitating on-line shopping using a control object and a predetermined site Inventors: Thomas Joshua Shafron, Qi Lu, Ashish Baldua US Patent Application 20060106681 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2005

Abstract

A method of modifying an Internet browser interface to provide shopping assistant functionality facilitating on-line shopping at a supported merchant Internet site. A wallet created in accordance with the present invention comprises a database having various user data stored therein under certain predetermined field names. A supported merchant data file identifies a plurality of supported merchants and enables the modified browser interface to determine when a shopper has navigated to a supported merchant web site. For each supported merchant, a rules and mapping file is created that may be used in connection with the wallet to map user-provided information in the wallet to corresponding fields in the merchant's check-out web page. When a user navigates to a supported merchant web site and desires to purchase merchandise and/or services from that merchant, the wallet automatically fills out the merchant's check-out web page(s), thereby simplifying on-line shopping and particularly, the check-out process.

Microsoft

Microsoft published a patent application for a community based answering system, and another on a way of bidding on ads based upon their location on a page.

Computer-implemented system and method for providing authoritative answers to a general information search Inventor: Brady D. Forrest Assigned to Microsoft Corporation US Patent Application 20060106788 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on March 29, 2005

Abstract

A computer-implemented system and method provides authoritative answers, developed within a community-based question answering service to users of a general network information search. This community-based question answering service receives a question from a first user, and receives answers from community members regarding this question. The authority of the answer is then determined by members of the community and if the authority is of an acceptable level, the question together with its authoritative answer is added to a database which includes all authoritatively answered questions. The answering service has an interface that exposes the contents of this database to queries from users of the network who are not necessarily members of the answering service. In one embodiment, results from queries of the community-based database are integrated with queries of a second database of general network information. An improved general information search service is also provided that includes query results from the authoritative answers generated by the community-based answering service.

Systems and methods for determining relative placement of content items on a rendered page Inventors: Kevin A. Meek, David E. Heckerman, David M. Chickering, Brian Burdick, Li Li, Murali Vajjiravel, Ying Li, Rajeev Prasad, Raxit Kagalwala, Tarek Najm, and Sachin Dhawan Assigned to Microsoft Corporation US Patent Application 20060106710 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on November 30, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods for determining the value of bids placed by content providers for placement positions on a page, e.g., a web page, rendered according to a given context, for instance, the search results listing for a particular query initiated on a search engine web site, are provided. Additionally, systems and methods are provided for determining placement of content items, e.g., advertisements and/or images, on a rendered page relative to other content items on the page based upon bid value.

Oracle

Oracle describes a "linguistically aware link analysis where link values incorporate content-based relevance values of associated pages as a function of the page link structure." By doing so, the odds that someone would follow one link over another upon a page would be different for each link, unlike some other link based ranking systems.

Linguistically aware link analysis method and system Inventors: Shamim A. Alpha Assigned to Oracle US Patent Application 20060106784 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on December 22, 2005

Abstract

Example, systems, methods, computer media, and other embodiments for determining relevance rankings for pages identified in a search query is provided. In one example, a computer program product can be configured to identify a candidate set of pages in response to a search query. A content-based relevance rank can be determined for at least one page of the candidate set of pages based on a content of the at least one page. The content-based relevance rank can be adjusted for one or more selected pages from the candidate set of pages by distributing a relevance rank from one or more pages that point to the one or more selected pages.

V-Enable

If you've used the Opera browser, you may be familiar with their mouse gestures, which can be used to navigate on, and to pages. Imagine something similar, but with gestures made with your wireless phone or PDA in hand. In this patent application, mobile Speech Search developer V-Enable describes a new method of navigation through the web using the motion of a wireless device.

Intelligent multimodal navigation techniques using motion of a mobile device sensed by a motion sensing device associated with the mobile device Inventors: Sunil Kumar, Subramanya R. Uppala, Dipanshu Sharma, Chandra Kholia, and Fernando Corona US Patent Application 20060107213 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on August 17, 2005

Abstract

Motion is used as an input to a program running on a mobile device. The mobile device may require input also from alphanumeric or text input device. The motion can be used for items such as selection from a list, or navigation on the map. The motion can be sensed on image processing the output of the camera, or can be directly determine using an accelerometer. Existing programs can be explicitly modified, in which case the program accepts the motion directly. Alternatively, the modification can be implicit--where the motion is converted to a signal that the program can accept, without modification.

My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 5:53 PM | Permalink

February 22, 2006

ContentAds, MSN's New Contextual Program, To Launch This Year

MSN's new contextual ad program now has a name, ContentAds, and a launch date of 2006.

The name and launch date were revealed in the description of the "Introducing AdCenter" session at Microsoft's upcoming Mix06 conference.

MSN wouldn't reconfirm the name and date, providing only this statement:

We recognize the strategic importance of syndication and contextual advertising.

For more details, see my extended write-up at JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 9:05 AM | Permalink

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