MSN adCenter Poised to become a Major Force in 2005-2006
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