Google has announced that it will now be accepting 3^rd party ad serving tags for its placement targeting network in the US and has plans to roll this out in the UK in the near future.  This is a big step for them and no doubt is linked to the double click acquisition in some way.  The Google Image ads network has long been a no go area for media planners due in no small part to the fact they didn’t accept 3^rd party tags.  This announcement could mean a big growth spurt for the network as it should attract more advertisers which in turn should attract more publishers and also publishers of a higher quality.  I would argue that Google needs to clean up their network a little in order to improve quality but you cant dispute the fact they have a large number of sites on board in a large number of verticals which could be tempting for the niche advertisers trying to build an effective media plan.  There’s no doubt the ability to select individual sites, the flexible pricing and now the acceptance of 3^rd party tags makes Google a viable option for future media plans and one good media planners should investigate.

apparently micorsoft is planning to expand its content offering and also the use of adcenter. verticalisation of the content network is essential if it is going to survive and be a useful medium in search marketing. google have done it through site targetting, miva are planning on completely restructuring around it and now microsoft is looking to follow suit. The obvious result of this (or what they will tell you) is much more targetted traffic. this has not been seen yet on Miva’s precision network (and costs have risen!) but if it is done well I can see it working. In the majority of markets though it will always be the poor relation to the main search network. It is still open to fraud and I still question whether unless a user is actively searching that they have a high enough propensity to click and ad and then ultimately convert through the website.


Microsoft’s adCenter content ads expanded
Advertisers looking for a better way to control and influence their online advertising efforts are going to get some help from Microsoft. Looking to increase how online marketers interact with their ad serving software, the company is expanding their adCenter offerings. According to reports, the expansion will give advertisers more control over online campaigns.
by Kristina Knight
The expansion will also give advertisers more outlets within the canopy of the MSN network.
MSN’s networks like Health and Fitness, Tech and Gadgets, Travel and Money currently house the majority of content ads from advertisers. With the new system, advertisers will control which networks show their ads, even going so far as to determine which specific content pages the ads appear upon. They will also be able to determine whether or not to allow ads within Windows Live Search results pages.
Advertisers can choose to run ads either on network content pages, on Live Search results pages or both. They can also track ad sales results from each platform.
There is no word when or if the content ads will be offered outside the Microsoft Network umbrella, but the potential to offer advertisers specialized ads on other platforms, like through Yahoo’s Panama platform or through Google’s AdSense platform is possible.