REDMOND, WA – Microsoft has announced the official launch of Microsoft adCenter, an online advertising platform which has been in beta in the US since October of last year.Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at yesterday’s seventh annual MSN Strategic Account Summit said that the new ad platform is currently serving 100-percent of paid search traffic on Microsoft online properties in the U.S. market.
“Ad-supported software services are an integral part of Microsoft’s plans to give consumers access to a broader variety of digital media, whenever they want and on whatever device they prefer,” Ballmer said. “Our close partnership with the ad community is extremely important to us as we evolve Microsoft from a software company into the world’s largest, most attractive provider of online media through MSN, Windows Live, and adCenter.”
In a press release issued by Microsoft, the company states that the goal of adCenter is to “ultimately provide advertisers with a one-stop-shop experience, whether buying search, contextual, or display ads across a number of Microsoft properties.”
Microsoft is touting the adCenter as the ultimate ad-targeting tool, in essence, saying that adCenter’s tools will allow “advertisers to select to whom, to what geographic location, and at what day of week or time of day they want their ad shown.”
To support its claims of adCenter’s performance and prowess, Microsoft cites the results of campaigns conducted by Performics Inc., a division of DoubleClick Inc. Stuart Frankel, president of Performics, aided Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi in demonstrating the adCenter at the Summit.
“We are very encouraged by the results of our campaigns in adCenter,” Frankel said “In particular, during the pilot, the vast majority of our clients’ conversion rates have been better on MSN than the other major search engines.”
In addition to demonstrating the current version, Mehdi gave a preview of a future release of adCenter, which will offer both contextual ads and paid search. Mehdi said Microsoft plans to start limited testing of the contextual ad engine in the US market this summer.
Microsoft also announced the acquisition of DeepMetrix Corp., a privately held Web-analytics and data services company, whose data Microsoft plans to incorporate into adCenter, as well.
“Expanding upon DeepMetrix technologies such as LiveSTATS.BIZ, Microsoft will deliver new Web analytics applications in future releases of Microsoft adCenter,” Microsoft stated in its press release.
