It’s no secret that MSN is preparing to take on Google AdWords & Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) in the Pay-Per-Click advertising space.
Searchenginelowdown.com has an review & screenshots of the new AdCenter interface and some of the cool features that MSN will be rolling out.
Highlights include:
- Geo-targeting by country, down to specific cities: Great for local businesses
- Age & Gender Targeting (wow!): Targeting only people old enough to have a credit card? Female Retirees? Male Teens? You will now be able to with this new feature. You can even bid different amounts per-click, depending on the gender or age group.
- Time Targeting. This is useful, if for example, a large number of your orders are placed over the phone. By targeting by time & date, you can restrict your advertising during hours which your phone reps are available to answer the phone
From the looks of it, the interface is more AdWords than Yahoo! Search Marketing – which probably means that Microsoft invested quite a bit of time and resources in focus groups, and usability studies, to ensure they “get it right”.
If you’re a PPC Advertiser based in the USA, you can register for the MSN AdCenter Pilot program through a link on this page. Good luck!
Matt MickiewiczMatt is the co-founder of SitePoint, 99designs and Flippa. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
