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MSN Announces New Pay Per Click Search Advertising Program

At an annual gathering of its most important advertisers last week, MSN officially announced during it will enter the paid search arena with a full-blown self-service paid listing program similar to those run by Yahoo! and Google.

The program will be tested in France and Singapore during the close of 2005. A date for a worldwide rollout has not been set.

MSN needs to establish its own program, something that seemed inevitable once Yahoo! announced it would purchase Overture in 2003. The move meant Overture -- which had been providing paid listings to both Yahoo! and MSN -- effectively lost its "neutrality" and really couldn't continue to be a long-term partner for MSN.

In addition, MSN had already decided at that point to build its own robot spider crawling search technology that is similar to how google works to produce editorial search listings. Developing a paid listings capability seemed almost a requirement for MSN , given competitors Google and Yahoo! have their own PPC search marketing programs.

MSN's PPC program is set to operate on a broad match basis, similar to Google's. Advertisers will also be able to target specific words and phrases such as sign design company , in addition to having exclusion video game testing options.

Beyond Google's and Yahoo!'s programs, the new MSN program will offer features such as dayparting, geotargeting, and demographic targeting based on age group, lifestyle, and topic such as: honda car parts .
Until MSN's new Pay Per Click search marketing program rolls out, MSN will continue its long-standing featured sites in the U.S., where search advertisers that spend at least $75,000 per month can get top placement for terms they want to target, above any results provided by Yahoo!

What does this MSN Pay Per Click development mean for Yahoo? Obviously, Yahoo stands to sacrifice significant chunks of income that it receives by providing paid listings to MSN. Advertisers won't flock to MSN and forsake the other two however portions of their Pay Per Click budgets will be reissued towards MSN's program.

MSN will be a third chocie PPC program that most everyone will enroll in.
Is it too little too late from MSN only time will tell. At least Redmond has finally found the lucrative search party, makes one wonder if they intend to continue improving their organic search shortcomings.