MSN offering PPC program

[wrgvt]

This is at least new to me. I used MSN for search today (which I hardly ever do) and found they had sponsored listings. So I clicked on "See your message here..." and arrived at this page:

[advertising.msn.com...]

Interesting tidbits:

MSN currently offers keyword-targeting search results in the "Sponsored Sites" section of the search results page at the top and bottom of the page. These are link placements that are limited to three paid clients per keyword and are available to advertisers with a minimum annual spend of $75,000.

MSN has partnered with Overture to provide businesses a quick and easy option for including their link in the "Sponsored Sites" sections of the search results page.

If I read this right, I can get a sponsored listing at the top and bottom of the page if I sign up with MSN and the ads on the right side of the page come from Overture?

[robotsdobetter]

No, Overture ads appear both on the top and the bottom too. I see my ads at the top all the time. Has anyone used MSN PPC?

Open only to U.S. residents employed as search advertising professionals, search marketers and small business owners in the US. See full rules for details.

You think they would open it up to more people.

[Richard Overvold]

I'm not sure what the situation is with this program you're speaking of. I called and talked to a rep about this. Not even sure where the ads are showing at this point. But what was made clear was that you'd be in a contract, AND you would HAVE to spend $75k with them. You wouldn't be able to say, "Oh, well, it's not working, so I guess I'll quit using it.". That won't work, you'll get charged anyway. Nice of them, eh? :)

[seth_wilde]

MSN has had this for years in various forms.. The minimum commitment used to be much higher.

[skibum]

It is a $75k min spend but I believe the contract has a 30-day out clause.

[VirginiaF]

I wish I had 75K to spend! But glad to see MSN giving the bigger engines some competition.

[Houndstooth]

I can give you more details on this.

MSN currently relies on Overture to populate most of its sponsored links. But MSN does have a contract available for advertisers willing to spend a lot of money (~$75k)over an extended period of time. This will allow the advertiser to jump right to the top in positioning on MSN, over any Overture ad. For any given keyword, only three slots are available for this service. Relative positioning is determined by the advertisers' overall spend with MSN (including Shopping, etc).

Here are the downsides:
Keywords are negotiated up front and are part of the contract.
MSN will run an analysis on those keywords, weight-averaging the current costs to quote you an average CPC that you will pay on ALL of your keywords. This will also be part of the contract.
You have a limited time to alter your list, ad copy, and links, but after 30 days you basically have no opportunity to optimize or alter your listings.

MSN agrees that this system is very outdated and manual from their end, and will be launching their own PPC solution similar to Google's later this year. I've seen a demo, and some of the features are pretty cool.

[EvilDan]

i have submitted a requst for information, as I fully intend on trying out their traffic. I will let you know how my test goes