Microsoft's adCenter Goes Live in US

Microsoft said Thursday that it has rolled out its self-serve advertising program adCenter across all its U.S. search queries, a year after the program was first announced. The company hopes that the switch would help to increase advertising revenue, as well as compete more directly with Google in the race for advertising dollars.

The program is still being deployed internationally, with the service already serving ads in France and Singapore. Testing in the U.K. is slated to begin in June.

Microsoft claims that most of the advertisers who have participated in the beta have seen better conversion rates, which is a good measure of success in advertising.

The switch has not been completely painless for Microsoft. After migrating most of its queries over to the program earlier this year, Microsoft saw its revenue per search drop. The company has predicted that its ad sales could drop as much as five percent as a result of the change.

However, Microsoft feels that getting adCenter going is key to its future success. Google is already way ahead of the company, with its AdWords program extremely successful and proving to be a large source of revenue for the Mountain View, Calif., based search giant.

In related news, Microsoft will acquire DeepMetrix, a privately held web analytics firm. DeepMetrix's technologies will be rolled into adCenter's service offering.