Today marked the launch in France. Last month it was introduced in Singapore. Next month the US should get its launch. You can view the logon page here.
Surprised no one has posted their thoughts on this. To me, it seems a bit pre-mature. MSN itself has a lot of work to do with its index, and now adding contextual advertising just seems to be a bit much for them. I know they want to hop into the game with Yahoo and Google, but I think they're biting off too much at once. I like the fact that their back link searches are the quickest around, and their indexing is fast, but their are a lot of issues with relevancy and spam that prevent the engine from being so much more. They're taking the right steps, but they need to take more IMO.
I think they are smart for trying to get their own ad program running as soon as possible. Right now they serve Yahoo/Overture ads on MSN search, and I don't think they like the idea of having a deal with a pretty big competitor.
I'm sure they working on both. MS is big company...there's the search team then there's the adcenter team. One doesn't take any resources from the other I'm sure.
I'm glad there will be yet another decent alternative to adsense , yahoo , clicksor , etc. for publishers to use.
I'm looking forward to playing with it... Ok, so the natural index may not be great (IMO), but the paid stuff *does* sound pretty interesting (Targetting based on user history, sex, location etc)...
This isn't apparent to me, so if it is obvious then forgive me. Will MSN have publishers like Google and Yahoo? Or are they the only publishers? Also, why Singapore and France?
Too late in my opinion. They were late on OS in Office aplication, Browsers, multimedia application and um wll they are the dominant one in all this fields now. And with $30 billion in cash they can compete well to fight G and Y.
they are running fast now, as yahoo is already in the market. i hope they will soon bring some value to advertising
Look at Hasta La Vista few years ago every one was using it no not the AOL user but the rest of us. And once BOOM here come Mr x and Mr Pi and launch the a company almost bigger them MSN its never to late and the i can not wait to M Y G get the same program and start WANTING us people to actully join them. Beucase with out there are nothing but they tend to forgett.
Right now they are only running ads on their own networks, but they will eventually offer it to other publishers. From the NY Times article: