Apparently Microsoft is buying placement on HP PC’s in order to gain share? Do you think this tactic still works?

Microsoft, HP will be search partners

By Benjamin J. Romano

Seattle Times technology reporter

The next piece of Microsoft’s full-speed-ahead charge for Internet search share is an exclusive distribution deal with Hewlett-Packard.

HP’s consumer PCs sold in North America will have a custom search toolbar and Internet Explorer will default to Microsoft’s Live Search engine beginning in January, Microsoft plans to announce today.

This arrangement with the No. 2 PC seller in the U.S. is the largest search-distribution deal yet for Microsoft, which is struggling to gain ground on Google and Yahoo.

With the deal, Microsoft’s Live Search will be positioned at a valuable entry point to the Internet for millions of consumers. It also displaces Yahoo, the erstwhile acquisition target and possible Internet search partner that landed a similar arrangement with HP in 2006.Here’s the full article: Thanks Tim

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2004451809_btlivesearch02.html

I spent the last two days at the 2nd Annual MSN Adcenter “Adchamps” Conference in Bellevue.  They were very sensitive about what we can/cannot blog.   I think this is what they said is bloggable:  They care about Quality, Transparancy and Efficiency.  Yeah vague, but they are nice big ideas and definitely important to us and our clients.

 My thoughts on the conference without breaking the NDA that we signed:

-MSN heard the collective friction and anxiety with advertisers using MSN Adcenter, especially from last year’s adchamps.  They demonstrated that they have been working all year on several betas that should make it easier to work with them. 

-They know they need more volume.  They did not spend that much time this year, as they did last year, talking theoretically about how they are embarking on a journey of becoming THE search destination in the long term (5-10 yrs) but there were a few speakers that gave enough of a hint that this is still a priority.  The end user experience is most important.  If the people come, so will the advertisers.  And hopefully by then, the tools will all be in place to make it effortless to get ads in the system and approved quickly.

In a nutshell:  The MSN Adcenter team has been working hard…it’s going to get easier to use the engine for your search campaigns, I promise.  They just cant commit when the tools will be released.

Feel free to comment me with you complaints and questions and I can post them on their adchamps forum site that they are going to create.  Or if you rather do the work yourself…check out their blog http://blogs.msdn.com/adcenter/

What do you folks think about this? I like this quote, potentially taken out of context

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the deal would transform its money-losing Internet division, which it sees as critical to growth, into a profitable pillar of its business.

“We have been losing money. Our plan here would be to not lose money in the future,” he said on a conference call

I attended the MSN webinar this week that gave a demo and some background behind Microsoft Adcenter’s latest research tool: The Excel Add-In called “Ad-Intelligence”.  Basically, this is another keyword (KW) research tool. 

It’s got a lot of the functionality of Google’s KW research tool in the User Interface (UI), and same stuff as some other independent KW research tools, plus some additional stuff only MSN can provide.  You’ll probably just want to test this out for yourself, so I have provided the appropriate links below.  If you want to hear my initial reaction, read on.

If you want to get this tool, you will find it here:
http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter_addin

If you want to comment or read other comments from people on this tool go here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/AdCenter/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=2017&SiteID=44
Read the rest…