Duncan Riley> The moves by Yahoo! to enter the domain of Google Adsense and offer targeted contextual advertising to small websites and blogs has been welcomed by many, but sneaking up the rear is Microsoft, who has announced that it is launching its own paid advertisements for MSN search results over night.
Whilst no information on the service was available at the time of writing this post, the functionality of being able to provide contextual advertising to search results is not all that much behind the ability to provide contextual advertising to blogs, as Google currently does with its Adsense product and Yahoo! is about to offer as well.
It’s no secret that Microsoft wants to challenge Google for market dominance in search, and its public knowledge that the bulk of Google’s revenue comes from Advertising. The launch of contextual advertising on MSN Search, whilst challenging Google head on, is only one part of the puzzle. For Microsoft and MSN Search to challenge Google across the board in the advertising & search spheres, it logically follows that it will offer web page and blog advertising.
Many were surprised at the speed at which MSN Search was launched, and now we have contextual advertising. The leap to paid advertising on blogs isn’t a huge one. So my prediction for the day: Microsoft will be offering contextual paid advertising (like Google Adsense) on blogs and small websites within 6 months.
