adCenter: MSN Display Ads: Now Targeting Behavior
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | September 6, 2006 | Share This
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Update/Correction: According to a MediaPost retraction, the new behavioral targeting feature will only pertain to MSN’s display advertising, NOT adCenter’s paid search product. Original story below:
Despite continually low market share, Microsoft adCenter has rolled out another feature that could lessen the number of people shown its ads: behavioral targeting. The upside, of course, is that if it works, the targeted traffic should convert better. From MediaPost:
“MSN will scrutinize people’s searching history and sites visited to determine their likely interests, and then create 18 audience segments. The segments include mobile users, Internet power users, gamers, movie watchers, new/expecting moms, parents, and several categories encompassing travel searchers, and auto buyers and researchers.”
We’re not sure how a person gets identified with one segment or another, or when (and if) someone gets booted. For instance, an “auto buyer researcher,” unless they’re a wealthy collector, usually only stays one until they succeed in buying a car.
The new behavioral targeting feature continues adCenter’s trend of offering products that narrow the audience for their ads, which would be a great idea if MSN commanded the kind of traffic enjoyed by Google or Yahoo! You can already target by demographic info, geographic info, and daypart using adCenter, features which competitors have either copied or are planning to copy. But none of this stuff is going to bear much fruit for adCenter until they boost their traffic.
We eagerly await the launch of Microsoft’s contextual ContentAds product, which should give its advertisers a bit more action. And we heard from a little birdy (okay, it was LiveSide) that MSN will soon go into retirement - at least in the UK. It’ll be replaced by the soon-to-be-un-beta’d Windows Live Search, which will include what they think is the “best” image search available, a new toolbar, and other goodies. We don’t know if search traffic will go up for sure with the changeover, but we suspect things are going to get interesting.
Topics: Microsoft |