MSN Opens U.S. adCenter Beta

MSN said it was opening up its adCenter self-serve advertising pilot to U.S. advertisers for a period of three hours beginning at 12pm Eastern Time on Monday. During that period, advertisers would be able to create an account for a $5 one-time fee.

adCenter debuted in a closed beta test in the United States in October of last year after successful launches in both France and Singapore the month before. MSN said in January that it had hoped to launch the program by June of this year.

The service allows the advertiser to target their ads to a specific demographic on MSN pages through the use of information culled from Microsoft's Passport service. While the idea initially sparked privacy concerns, the company assured users that all information is supplied stripped of any private information.

MSN is slowly converting its search engine ads over to adCenter, and by launch in June, all ads on the service would be handled by the program. Other company Web properties will be added to adCenter throughout the year.

Microsoft's MSN Search is ranked third in terms of visitors, behind both Google and Yahoo. The company has admitted that it joined the search engine race late, and has spent a lot of time trying to make up lost ground by differentiating itself through new services.

The company also hopes that its adCenter product will draw advertisers away from competitor Google's AdWords, which is increasingly controlling a larger share of Web advertising. However, adCenter differs from Google's product as it is currently only intended for Microsoft properties, rather than any Web site running Google AdSense.