MSN.com (Microsoft) search engine has recently announced two new programs for courting advertisers. First, according to the Detroit News, Microsoft will be testing its MSN adCenter in France and Singapore within the next 6 months. Currently, MSN serves up sponsored ads on their search results pages which are delivered by Yahoo! – Overture (or YO! for short). MSN’s contract with Yahoo! for ad delivery runs out in July 2006.
According to Microsoft, “MSN adCenter is the MSN Paid Search solution, which will offer innovative tools in search marketing. The new MSN search advertising solution will put the power and knowledge of the audience in your hands, allowing you to refine your online campaign with flexibility and control to help you maximize ROI.”
The second advertising solution, which MSN is beta testing right now, is MSN Shopping beta, which will replace the current MSN Shopping site and is expected to compete with sites like Shopping.com, Froogle and Yahoo! Shopping. According to MSN, “We are testing new technology to help you find product information easily and make informed buying decisions. Our focus here is to explore new ways to help you search for products, refine your search, sort results in a variety of different ways (by price, popularity, etc.), compare similar products and their cost at different stores and to provide product ratings and reviews by shoppers like yourself.”
The new MSN Shopping site offers yet another avenue to connect buyers and advertisers and compete head on with the other two search giants. In fact, both MSN adCenter and MSN Shopping will help MSN take market share away from Google and Yahoo! and attract new advertisers as well. Currently many advertisers buy PPC ads on Overture in order to get into MSN. The PPC ad rates for MSN adCenter are expected to be far lower than Google or YO!, which will give advertisers yet another alternative for their advertising dollars. MSN’s shopping site will also pull advertisers away from the other two search engines and help MSN to gain ground in the ever growing competition of the search engine wars.
This competition will be great for consumers, advertisers and MSN. It will challenge Google and Yahoo! to keep delivering new and innovative search tools in order to try to retain market share themselves or at least grow the market so that even if their shares decrease, the market will increase and they will still be able to satisfy their own shareholders.
The search wars are just getting started so stay tuned.
