The Microsoft adCenter Code Blog

Recently I was checking out some sites I have given links to from some of my personal sites. A few I had used rel=”nofollow” on which is supposed to tell spiders to not follow a link. Part of this is to help link spam like in blog comments so you are not pirated for your page rank by spammers.

In any event I found myself being shown as a back link on MSN Search. Both Google and Yahoo appeared to respect the nofollow tag but not MSN. I will post more about this as I dig deeper just for right now it is clear doing a rel=”nofollow” doesn’t seem to effect msn search,

Jack

“On Friday MicroSoft announced that it has hired away InterActive Corp search head Steve Berkowitz to lead its Online Business division, which includes MSN and Windows Live.

Berkowitz will replace David Cole on May 8, who announced he would be taking a leave of absence in March. In an e-mail to the Microsoft Platforms and Services Division Friday, Berkowitz’s new boss Kevin Johnson told employees that he had the right mix of experience and a “deep functional knowledge of the search.”

Read the entire story at BetaNews 

A few days ago I posted

Could Microsoft Buy Yahoo? - Seven Reasons it Could Happen!

I posted about it at The Search Engine Watch Forum and this was the response one poster had.  I found it interesting and from a clearly informed party so I though I would share it here.

“MSFT could easily buy Yahoo. Yahoo has a market cap of roughly 45 bil. and MSFT has 34 bil. in cash.

Give YHOO a 50 percent premium and you have roughly 67 bil. price tag.
MSFT will not give up all their cash to secure YHOO but they could easily put up 20 bil. and float some stock to secure a deal.

They would approach 30 percent of search and would have enough cash left to outbid Google by giving 100 percent of publisher share on content search.

In a protracted war Google would lose. Their share price would fall, institutions would pull their investments and Google would be forced to issue more shares just to keep itself funded.

That being said I don’t think Gates has another war in him.”

The poster identified himself only by the handle “webvisitor” so at this time I can’t credit him any better then I have done here.  I found two things to be the most interesting about his commentary.

1.  The math behind the fact that the buyout could happen.  I mentioned this in my post, however he broke it down to specifics to demonstrait exactly how it could be done for above par market value.

2.  More interesting his comments on the effect it would have on Google.  I of course had thought of how it would effect the search landscape but what I really had not pondered is the effect it would have on Google stock, given how high it is currently trading.

On his last comment, “That being said I don’t think Gates has another war in him”, I personaly don’t feel that while he may be right that it has too much of an influence on if there will be a “war” or not.  Bill has plenty of Generals and Soliders to fight any wars for him.  Besides if Microsoft didn’t want a search market share war they wouldn’t be in the game at all.

Jack Spirko

I just learned the following from the MSN adCenter team:

“We have listened to your feedback during the MSN® adCenter pilot, and we are excited to announce an upcoming update of the tool, with some new features that will offer you a better, easier, and more productive customer experience.

With these new features, you will be able to:

• Add multiple keywords when creating campaigns, rather than manually typing each keyword.
• Sign up for MSN adMail with the new Communication Preferences checklist.
• Print billing statements through our updated Billing tab.
• Estimate bids to help reach position one ad ranking through our improved price estimation tool.
• Insert text dynamically into an ad title or ad text (formerly known as parameters).

Please note that MSN adCenter will be down briefly while it’s being updated on the afternoon of April 18. This should have no effect on your existing data or campaigns, which will remain live during this time. However, you will not be able to access your account or its features while we update adCenter, so we encourage you to make any needed immediate changes to your account beforehand.

To get more information about MSN Search, or to review frequently asked questions about MSN adCenter, check out our FAQ and Troubleshooting sections in the MSN adCenter Learning Center.

Sincerely,

The MSN adCenter team”

These modifications will be very beneficial to adCenter advertisers, with my favorite being the ability to add lists of keywords as opposed to the previous time consuming way of typing each keyword in one at a time.

The other key benefit of the upgrade will be the addition of the bid estimation tool. This will be helpful to advertisers who are targeting a specific ranking positions.

The newest and most unexplained upgrade is the new MSN adMail. I would guess that this will be a way for MSN to communicate the latest news and changes to adCenter in an easy fashion. I will contact Jaun and see if that is the case and update the blog as soon as I know,
Jack Spirko

I know this might sound like hype or at least over speculation but I think perhaps it is more then possible, perhaps it may even be plausible?

Recently CNN Reported that both Yahoo and Microsoft were in the process of purchasing land in Quincy Washington. The reasons given were many and no intent by MicroSoft to buy Yahoo was mentioned or even implied but I think perhaps there is something to be considered here.

1. Yahoo is definitely an under achiever in the market. Despite being number 2 in total revenue between Google and MSN they really seem to make a ton of mistakes. They never seem to promote their features the way Google does, they fail to add simple things like a direct way to use their blog search (come on this would take like 10 seconds to do in fact someone actually wrote a bit of code for this) and as a result their stock sits at 10% of what Google trades for.

2. For years MSN has had access to huge amounts of data in using Overture ads on MSN. They know what bidders are paying, click through rate data, etc. They know more then you and I could ever know about Yahoo’s ad program. In fact they must know due to shear volume alone more about the program then any one else other then people inside Yahoo. With the ability of MicroSoft to analyze and process data they may in fact know more about some areas then Yahoo knows.

3. Why would these two giants both choose to buy land for data centers in a small place like Quincy, WA at the same time. The article on CNN reports that low cost land, a cheap work force, plenty of room to expand, etc are driving the decisions. Well, I am sure that is the case but the same can be said for countless small towns across rural America. The fact is either the city of Quincy has one of the best public relations departments in the world that just landed two of the biggest global companies at the same time solely on their ability or the two companies have something going on behind closed doors. You tell me which one seems more likely.

4. MicroSoft has the money! This is huge alone with Yahoo stock at mid 30’s MicroSoft could easily afford to purchase the majority share. I am sure it would be termed a merger but lets face it Microsoft is a much bigger fish.

5. It fits with MicroSoft philosophy. Windows was not created by Bill Gates it was purchased. It makes sense MSN is working hard to gain market share, yahoo has it, so buy it. Further with the new adCenter model applied to the open bid system of Yahoo a real upside could be produced by displaying more relevant ads higher (Something else Yahoo has refused to do). In short MSN would gain market share, all the neat Yahoo programs (that Yahoo has done a lousy job promoting) then put Microsoft’s marketing machine behind it.

6. The time is right to get it past legal channels. Right now Google is hovering around 47% of the market share, Yahoo and MSN would combined hold onto about 40% so no case for a monopoly being formed could be made. If 40% is a monopoly then Google is sitting on one. Plus with Ask.com making a new push and tons of others (Chitika, Kontera, Miva) now in the publisher side as well there would be little from the anti trust world that could stop the merger.

7. True solidification of the demographic targeting market. Right now despite the bugs in MSN adCenter they are clearly ahead in the demographic targeting market. Googles attempt to match this with a modified site targeting approach on the content side doesn’t come close to the capability MSN is developing. Now if you were to add the demographic data that Yahoo has access to but fails to use (think about the user data from yahoo mail accounts alone), to the approach MSN is developing their ability to target demographically would be beyond any current expectations.

Again this article is purely speculative and I have no hard data to back up the possibility but looking at this from a forecasting perspective all the pieces seem to be in place for at least the real possibility to exist. It is certainly something worth considering and keeping an eye on,

Jack Spirko

It seems that MSN adCenter will be open soon to all comers (sometime in the next few weeks). Many are saying the bid to swipe business from Google’s advertising programs, which raked in $6.1 billion in 2005, comes with at least one built-in advantage: Advertisers want more choices then the two big ones they have now.

If nothing changes over the next 4 years, Google and Yahoo would each take their share of an online ad market that could be worth $55 billion by 2010 according to some analyists. Even the more conservative estimates, such as one from Forrester, put it at about $26 billion in 2009. That is a lot of market share for two players to gain unopposed by any third party. Whatever the growth figure is, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made it clear he wants a lot of it and there are plenty of Google and Yahoo customers who want to see Microsoft succeed. “Our customers are telling us they really want a third valid choice with real market reach,” says Mark Barrera, an Internet Marketing Expert with MasterLink Search Engine Marketing Services in Dallas Texas.

Some analists state that as MSN only generated $1.4 billion in online ad revenue in 2005 this all may be to little to late but to me I have a very hard time using the word billion and only in the same sentence! MSN is indeed poised to become a major force in PPC. One additional thing people seem to fail to realize is how much of that 1.4 billion went to Yahoo via the agreement between the two companies. Simply by going on their own they will at once take a signifigant piece of what has been Yahoo market share.

Of course Google is still the dominant player and they won’t just sit back and let MSN take business away from them. Yet I also feel what some are calling a smart move by Google was just tipping their hand that they are afraid of MSN’s long term success potential. Back in March right after the release of MSN adCenter Beta 3.0 Google announced with much excitement the launch of Google Demographic Targeting which seemed to offer direct competition with MSN’s demographic targeting. Once again Google seemed to be “on the ball”.

Marketers soon found out though that Google’s version was not like MSN’s at all. With MSN you can target users who are say female from the age of 30-45 and bid higher when a user who is known to fit that demographic is running a search. With Google’s version you simply do content ads on a website that is known to serve the target demographic. To me this was a quick slap together approach just so they could have demographic targeting too. I am not the only one that thinks this way, this post called

The truth About Google’s Demographics Targeting by Anvil Media is worth a read.

In any event when a major player like Microsoft makes a 100 million dollar investment into a new business unit it is wise not to underestimate them.

Jack Spirko