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.