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Privacy advocates, bloggers, and many people's own low tolerance level for creepiness may mar not just the advertising program but MSN itself.

MSN PPC Advertising Demographic & Behavioral Targeting Features Overview

The coolest thing about the new MSN PPC advertising network is that it will incorporate demographic information and "behavioral targeting"--at least that's what many bloggers in the marketing field seem to think. MSN will delimit the only quest cowcatcher advertising program that lets advertisers know unsmooth what proportion of users who search on a particular keyword are interested in certain market segments, as well territorial dominion those searchers' demographic breakdown. For instance, MSN might tell you that most of the searchers on the keyword "monster motor vehicle rally" appear to be women age bracket 50-65, and that they also broad appear to be interested usa auto racing and cruiser parts, but are not more than probable than other searchers to buy off an automobile online.

How will MSN know so much about searchers? Ah, that's the interesting stead... MSN has quietly been assembling and sorting this information for years in preparation for this venture. That is, it uses cookies to track individual users' web graze at the MSN portal--just as every other business website does. Presumably it will also connect the data with information from user profiles from MSN's .Web passport and Hotmail, in order to determine searchers' demographic information intensive as sex and occupation.

Now, if you use the MSN Hunting, and you also have a .Benefit passport and/or Hotmail account (as you probably do, even if you've forgotten ever signing up for it back uk 1998 when you sought a free email address to sign sprouted to read the New York Times online), all your searches may be matched ahead with your user information from your .Ensnarl passport or Hotmail account--and will be, even if the information is kept separate from your personally identifying information.

If you actual were honest on your application to those services, that information may include your address, average annual income, personal interests, and a horsey set of other juicy bits of information any self-respecting pitch or voyeur would love to have. Even if you weren't honest, at the very least it might include the addresses of the people you have exchanged emails with, your IM buddies, and just which newsletters you've signed up for and whice you're send to the junk email folder.

Of course, Microsoft Corporation has such a sterling reputation in the internet community and the world at large that it will undoubtedly be trusted implicitly with such a wealth of nuts and bolts on every user. And most people have absolutely no reason to care if their online representation were associated with their real identities, anyway.

True, it is widely believed that almost a quarter of all web page views and a comparable proportion of search engine searches involve naughtynaughty pictures. But surely that's the work of a small army of trench-coat-wearing filth addicts who spend all day doing nothing but feed their habit, and off multiple computers simultaneously. Certainly not you, any of your family members, or that guy in the shipping department who wears a WWJD T-shirt to work everyday and is always trying to convince anyone in earshot that dinosaurs and the nonradioactive carbon dating of their fossils are yet another thought of the degenerate left-wing imagination.

So unnaturally, Microsoft has fanny adams to concern about. Privacy advocates, bloggers, message boards and chat rooms around the internet won't be on counterfire with warnings not to use MSN search unless you want a permanent record of your doings attached to that Hotmail account you deleted but that may not have really been deleted. And no prosecutor will make headlines by trying to instauration a defendant's MSN online activity history as evidence into court.

And so applied science naturally follows that we can all forget about Overture and Google Adwords since there's a new army brat on the block who's so untold cooler.

Previous page: Background of red-hot MSN PPC Top billing Network

If you're interested in reading further, one of the most extensive discussions of MSN's sunrise advertising program is the marketing blog of Charlene Li at the Forrester corporation. That blog is representative of the rose-colored-glasses view held by the lifesize corporate commerce world. Microsoft's fighter release announcing the new MSN advertising program is also worth reading if you're that into this.

About the author

Joel Walsh is the head writer at UpMarket, internet marketing services, online copywriting services, & website content provider focusing on small and medium-sized businesses and those who serve them.