AdCenter is scheduled to formally launch tomorrow (Thursday), according to a story that appeared in the WSJ (sub. req'd). Its chief selling feature, AdCenter promises to offer more precise targeting options than currently available on Google or Yahoo!:
MSN adCenter provides advertisers like you the opportunity to expose your business to the right audience. Using adCenter’s targeting features, you can choose to have your ad displayed to audiences performing searches using your keywords who specifically fit the targeting criteria you choose, such as:
- Geographic location
- Day of week
- Time of day
- Gender
- Age
Here's Did-It's Kevin Lee's early bullish assessment of adCenter. And here's more about the launch from CNET and Bloomberg (lots of combative language in this story).
Assuming that AdCenter is as "robust" as the claims, the challenge for Microsoft is boosting its consumer traffic to grab more of the marketing ad spend. As long as it remains number three in terms of consumer usage, its ad revenues will generally follow suit.
On a somewhat related note, earlier today I was speaking to Stefanie Olsen at CNET about Google's Wi-Fi efforts and what that hypothetically brought to AdWords. In fact, Wi-Fi offers the ability to locate the user with near absolute certainty in contrast to IP targeting, which is good but imprecise (AOL and Comcast are always the examples cited). Assuming that user isn't at a Starbucks and is in her home, what that Wi-Fi location precision also brings is demographic targeting. Indeed, better location targeting = demographic targeting.
Let me explain what I mean. AdCenter promises demo targeting largely based on hotmail, messenger and passport user profiles and registrations. Wi-Fi networks and their extremely precise location targeting bring that to the table in a different and probably more accurate way.
Let's assume the user is online in his/her home (putting aside that affluent users might not be adopting free Wi-Fi). Once you know where the user lives, you can layer Census data on top of location. Suddenly you know things like:
- Household incomes
- Home prices
- Number of children in the home under 18
- Numbers of home offices
- What percentage of residents take public transportation
This is only the beginning of the data that are available at the neighborhood level. You can start to see that geotargeting takes on a whole new character with this kind of data. But all of that depends on locating the user with precision, which is in part what Google’s Wi-Fi initiative is about.
One might expect that advertisers would pay a premium to target only those neighborhoods where high-probability customers were. If I'm a financial planner, for example, I might like to target prospects within 15 miles of my office who have incomes of more than $100,000. I could use this hypothetical enhanced local-targeting system (with information on income leves) to only advertise in those neighborhoods where my potential customers were (e.g., “Pacific Heights”) — as opposed to a broader geographic area (e.g., SF Bay Area). The benefits are obvious for local realtors soliciting potential sellers to list with them. And if I'm a regional car dealer I could similarly use this enhanced local targeting to reach only those potential prospects who fit a would-be buyer profile for VW Jettas or Toyota hybrids.
Better local ad targeting, as these examples hopefully indicate, is ultimately about demographic targeting. AdCenter's debut will put some pressure on Yahoo! and Google to offer more and better targeting options to advertisers, which they're now working on and rolling out to varying degrees: Yahoo! with behavioral targeting and Google with demographic targeting by vertical.
As Microsoft ratchets up the competitive pressure and advertisers start to demand more capabilities and data, we’re going to see more and more advancements in ad targeting. I think we're only beginning to glimpse the future.
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Here's the adCenter press release.
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