MSN adCenter to Launch in June

Microsoft's new system for selling advertising within its search results will go live in June, the company announced Friday. MSN adCenter will compete with rival offerings from Google and Yahoo, as well as eventually become a one-stop-shop for advertising across any of Microsoft's online services.

Eventually, a user would be able to buy ad space on services like MSN Spaces or Office Live. The tools to make this happen are not yet complete, Microsoft says, but should be over the next year. The technology would alllow an advertiser to target their campaigns to specific demographics.

These demographics would be culled in an anonymous way from Microsoft's Passport system, giving a company broader control over who sees their ads.

adCenter has been in testing since last spring, and a quarter of the ads on its search engine are being sold through the new service. As the company moves closer to its June deadline, that number will rise to 100 percent.

Microsoft also announced Thursday that it was forming a joint effort between the adCenter team and Microsoft Research Asia in Bejing, China. The two teams will work to bring adCenter to a broader audience, as well as refine the methods which the system pairs advertisers with consumers through the company's various web properties.

"With this long-term applied research, we will continue to help improve advertisers’ return on investment by delivering rich audience intelligence information and enabling simple and complete control over all aspects of the advertising campaigns," adCenter general manager Tarkek Najm said.

Microsoft's MSN Search is ranked third in terms of visitors, behind both Google and Yahoo. The company has admitted that it joined the search engine race late, and has spent a lot of time trying to make up lost ground by differentiating itself through new services.