Microsoft appears to be letting anyone now sign up for adCenter, the long-awaited, self-serve Internet advertising feature that competes with Google’s pioneering AdWords.
To create an adCenter account, you must leave a credit card number. Microsoft then charges that credit card account a nonrefundable $5. From there, adCenter is very similar to Google’s AdWords.
Each lets someone bid against others to have their advertisement accompany search results for a particular search term. Each time someone clicks on the ad, Google or Microsoft or another such company gets paid the amount of the winning bid.
But Microsoft thinks it has a big edge. The company claims that no other search advertising program steers ads to customers based on day of the week, time of day and a specific geographic location.
AdWords and a self-serve feature from Yahoo can’t target an audience that precisely. In theory, the more refined the audience choice, the more successful the marketing.
adCenter makes Microsoft a “solid No. 3 player,” Directions On Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff said during an interview in late December, when adCenter first appeared on the scene in Singapore and France.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Microsoft’s adCenter Now Open for Business
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