JenSense is reporting that Microsoft has revealed the name of their new contextual advertising program: ContentAds. She found the name in description of a session to be held at the MIX06 conference. Also revealed was that the program will begin this year.
Hot on the heels of finding out about Amazon’s beta test of an AdSense competitor, there is word that another contextual ad network is in the works. This one is called Turn.com and is headed by Jim Barnett, who was CEO of Altavista and was also a top exec at Overture. He is also currently chairman of the board at SideStep, Inc. a travel search engine.
He’s planning to launch a next-gen advertising network called Turn Inc. in the next several months. He has $10 million in venture funding, and some 16 PhDs in-house. The idea is that advanced search will target advertisements to users with a precision we’ve not yet seen.
Normally, if a start-up was trying to compete directly against Google, Yahoo, MSN and Amazon, I would say they were doomed. However, Given Jim Barnett’s history in this space, they might be worth keeping an eye on. Given the fact that we really know nothing about this venture yet, I guess we’ll have to wait and see. If they are quick about getting things going, as start-up tend to be, they may be able to beat Yahoo, MSN and Amazon out of beta though, giving them a little head start on some of the competition.
Found via John Battelle’s SearchBlog.
Something that is a frequent source of speculation on forums is why Google sometime uses “Ads by Goooooogle” instead of “Ads by Google”. They have now answered that question on the Inside AdSense blog.
[W]e thought “Ads by Goooooogle” would be a fun alternate version of “Ads by Google” for our AdSense ad units. They are both branding features we’ve tested, and we found that “Ads by Goooooogle” is often more memorable for users than “Ads by Google”, so you may notice either label appearing beside your ads at any given time.
So, there really is no reason for it.
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Chris Beasley is talking about a new beta program that Amazon is starting that appears to be a new, direct competitor to AdSense. Amazon has been contacting some members of their associates program and asking them to join the beta test. This means there will soon be four major players, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Amazon competing for publishers. As I have always said I think this competition among them is great for publishers. Competition will force the ad networks to add more features and keep reasonable payouts.
Found via Eric Giguere
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There is a new site, AdSenseBits, that is cataloguing emailed questions and answers from AdSense support. There is some discussion as to whether or not this violates the AdSense TOS on a Digital Point Forum thread. Hopefully everything will work out and this will become a valuable resource for AdSense publishers.
Update: AdSenseBits got an email from Google OKing the publishing of emails.
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