Microsoft Corp will begin testing a service in the next six months in France and Singapore in which clients pay to be listed alongside its MSN search results in a bid to boost revenue from Internet advertising sales.
The service, part of the new MSN adCenter, was to be demonstrated yesterday during Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer's speech to ad customers, MSN Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said in an interview on Tuesday. Mehdi declined to say when the tests will be expanded or when a final version will be available.
The service will put MSN in competition for ad dollars with similar products from No. 1 US search engine Google Inc and No. 2 Yahoo! Inc.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, got more than US$1 billion in sales last year from Internet ads. The market for Internet search-related ads is now worth about US$6 billion and will double by 2008, Mehdi said.
"It's going to be a no-brainer that people are going to sign up for this service," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, a JupiterMedia Corp Web site that tracks the industry.
"MSN has a sizable amount of search traffic, so people will sign up for that in addition to Google and Yahoo," he said.
The service may help Microsoft boost ad revenue at its MSN Internet unit and revive sales growth. Microsoft's revenue will rise 8 percent this fiscal year, the slowest pace ever, after an average of 38 percent growth in the 1990s.
The services all auction off keywords so that when a user enters that word into the search engine the ad appears alongside results of the search.
MSN, the No. 3 US search engine, hopes to hook advertisers with extra tools that will help them select which keywords work best at luring target customers. For example, the list of available keywords for a certain product will show which ones work better with men or women and specific age groups and income levels, Mehdi said.
Advertisers will be able to purchase keywords for use only at certain times of the day or on weekends, he said, in order to target a specific group. After an ad campaign has ended, MSN, which has been working on this service since October 2003, will provide customers data on the types of people who clicked on ads.
Trying to catch market leader Google, Microsoft last month released its first search engine built from scratch. Microsoft still uses Yahoo's Overture, renamed Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions on March 1, to supply ads that appear alongside results.
Online ads make up only 4 percent or 5 percent of total spending on advertising, Mehdi said. That should increase to 10 percent to 15 percent in the next few years, he said. Spending on online ads will increase to US$20 billion to US$25 billion by 2008 from about half that now, he said.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS