Google Preps CPC Option for Display Advertisers

Google plans to introduce cost-per-click (CPC) ad buying in March, to give another payment option to its advertisers who use AdWords to place display ads on select sites, reports MediaPost.
Google said it is looking for marketers willing to take part in a test of the CPC program. For now, display advertisers can purchase ads on a only cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis when using the site-targeting option to select specific sites on which to place their ads.

Some advertisers have been asking for a CPC option as they look for more flexibility in their ad planning; others have simply been reluctant to pay on a CPM basis.
Display advertising is popular with marketers whose emphasis is branding and/or direct response, and CPC makes those programs more easily quantifiable.

adCenter Labs Shows off 'Breakthroughs,' Video Hyperlinks

Microsoft offering what it says is a"glimpse at the future of online advertising" and announced that its video hyperlink technology will debut ahead of schedule.

Microsoft's third-annual Demo Fest two-day gathering in Redmond is showcasing "breakthrough digital advertising tools" by Microsoft adCenter Labs, which is tasked with spawning innovations for Microsoft's adCenter platform.

Microsoft adCenter Labs will work with a national retailer this spring to bring the first Video Hyperlink ad pilot to MSN, Microsoft said. The ad will feature a video segment with embedded hyperlinks for featured products. Those who click on the products will be taken to a page on the retailer's website where they can purchase the item.

"At last year's Demo Fest we said that this technology would take us three to five years to get to market, but due to overwhelming community feedback we've been able to release it in just one year," said Tarek Najm, distinguished engineer and general manager of Microsoft adCenter.

The seven focus areas of adCenter Labs are keyword and content technologies, ad selection and relevance, audience intelligence, social networking, video, platforms, and devices. Among the technologies being developed by the 120 or so Microsoft adCenter Labs researchers and engineers are the following (as described by Microsoft):

Keyword Services Platform. The platform provides a set of web service APIs related to keyword technologies, including keyword recommendation, forecasting, categorization and monetization, enabling developers to build more intelligent applications for online advertising and beyond.

Commercial intent detection. Advanced keyword analysis helps differentiate consumers who want to make an online purchase from those who are searching for information about products or performing other tasks.

Large display feedback. Vision-based technology creates interactive public displays that can measure the size of the audience, as well as track audience gestures and estimate demographics.

Social video sharing. This is a next-generation video-sharing solution that features a synchronized "commenting" technology. The introduction of in-video, synchronized comments enables a new level of interaction between users, opening up the video as a medium for collaboration.

Content classification. By accurately analyzing and matching the Web pages included in search results, Microsoft adCenter Labs technology helps increase the probability that the ads displayed during web searches are relevant to consumers.

Microsoft's Live Drive to Challenge Google's Gdrive

MSN is developing a new Windows Live service - Live Drive - which is a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data, apparently similar to rival Google's Gdrive, news of which was leaked in March, reports PC Magazine. Both Google and Microsoft have been mum about details. Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie acknowledged Microsoft's Live Drive plans in an interview with Fortune Magazine published on April 19.

"Microsoft is planning to use its server farms to offer anyone huge amounts of online storage of digital data," according to the Fortune article. "With Live Drive, all your information - movies, music, tax information, a high-definition video-conference you had with your grandmother, whatever - could be accessible from anywhere, on any device."

In March, Google's plans were revealed when PowerPoint slides and their accompanying text comments from Google's presentation to analysts were inadvertently published online.
Among those PPT comments: "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today."

At the time, Jack Schofield of the Guardian's Technology Blog wrote: "This is a classic Evil Empire idea. If it was proposed by IBM or Microsoft, it would be dismissed as deranged. And Google is, of course, exactly the same sort of multibillion dollar multinational corporation as IBM and Micrososft, even though it claims to be different ("Do no evil"). It's a strategy that George Orwell would appreciate."

Google, Microsoft to Build More Data Centers

Google and Microsoft plan to spend over $1 billion between them on new data centers to handle expected rapid growth in online traffic, reports the Financial Times.

Google said it would spend $600 million to build a new site to house a server farm in Lenoir, a small town in North Carolina, and Microsoft unveiled plans for a $550 million facility in San Antonio, Texas. Several states have been battling to attract internet data centers; Google chose North Carolina after receiving incentives worth $100 million.

Microsoft has been laying the groundwork for its new "Live" range of services, which represent its latest attempt to revitalize its online services business. The San Antonio plant will be the second data center created for the Live business.

The two search giants typically build centers in the Pacific Northwest, where lower hydroelectic power costs make them cheaper to run.

Microsoft Plans MSN R&D Center in China

For its MSN service, Microsoft is setting up a research and development center in Shanghai - the software giant's first such international center.

Located in the Zizhu Science Park, the R&D center could cost as much as $20 million and will focus on the development of online software, Reuters reports. The center will also house a technical support team for MSN Messenger, which has become an integral part of the online lives of teenagers and young professionals in China, where MSN Messenger has over 20 million users.

An R&D facility in China would also allow Microsoft to tap into a large supply of engineering talent as well as increase it chances of becoming localized.

MSN China is also said to be partnering with Shanghai Media Group, one of the country's biggest media companies, on online video and shopping business. The R&D center may develop software to provide technical support to the partnership.