Your Leading keyword research tool & keywords web site promotion site submission web site: [keyword analysis research] Discover Keyword Optimization By Microsoft Showed Off AdCenter Last Week HERE!

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

[keyword analysis research] Discover Keyword Optimization By Microsoft Showed Off AdCenter Last Week HERE!

Today I am going to update you about Microsoft's Keyword Optimization showed off last week. Yesterday I got a newsletter written by Kevin Newcomb about Microsoft showed off last week.

You'll discover one of three key areas Microsoft showed off last week below:

"Microsoft last week showed off adLabs research focusing on three key areas: keyword optimization, video display ads, and consumer orientation.

Keyword Optimization
Keyword optimization efforts are built upon the Keyword Service Platform (KSP), a set of services that third-party developers can use through APIs to build Web applications to analyze keywords. Microsoft released the APIs to developers last week, and Colborn said partners are currently working on various applications to more effectively suggest, categorize, monetize and forecast traffic and extract keyword terms.

"We're making it an open network by publishing and sharing the algorithm," said James Colborn, product manager for adCenter Labs. "We're excited to see how our partners will build on the KSP."

Microsoft has developed its own set of tools in adLabs based on the KSP, including a keyword forecasting tool, a search funnel analysis tool, and a search result clustering tool. A vertical competitive analysis feature allows advertises to dig deeper into the "long tail" keyword suggestions, and more accurately test budget predictions.

Marketers will also be able to extract trends in search campaigns to create modeling and forecasting tools to apply to their broader business, since the search queries will capture user intent around the marketer's products and services, he said.

Some of the more developed keyword optimization projects underway in adLabs include tools to improve the detection of commercial intent, to break down multi-word queries into separate phrases, and to classify keywords into a taxonomy that will improve contextual targeting of ads.

Commercial intent detection, currently being tested in adLabs, returns a probability score reflecting the likelihood that a word or phrase is part of a search with commercial intent. The scoring can be used to track a searcher's progress through the purchase funnel, or to determine that a searcher is not looking to purchase, but to support a previous purchase.

For instance, "digital photography" shows a 51.4-percent likelihood of having commercial intent, which reflects the informational nature of the query. Moving farther toward commercial intent is "digital camera tips," which shows an 81.7-percent likelihood.

When it gets down to choosing a camera model, searchers would likely turn to queries like "digital camera review," which shows a 98.3-percent likelihood of commercial intent, and finally "digital camera store" shows a 99.8-percent likelihood of commercial intent.
"Most marketers are ROI-focused, and can't afford the luxury of paying for non-commercial keywords," Colborn said. The tool can also help marketers target ads to users that can help move them to the next stage of the purchase funnel, or target them with information or services appropriate to their non-commercial query. "Marketers understand that people do research and eventually buy. They may want to reach their audience in the research phase so they'll keep them in mind later when they're in the commercial phase," he said.

In order to better process multi-word queries, Microsoft is developing 'query entity detection" algorithms, to break down queries into chunks that go together. So a search for "real estate agent" would recognize the phrase "real estate" should stay together, instead of treating them as a collection of single terms. The algorithm analyzes the relationship between words in a search term, and decides the best way to break it down to improve relevance of results.

The keyword categorization engine will be incorporated into adCenter as part of the Content Ads addition later this quarter. It will help solve the problem that some contextual ad networks have of delivering too much irrelevant traffic or not enough traffic overall, Colborn said.

"You need to place contextual ads in the most precise category. The keyword categorization engine will identify content channels appropriate for a business, and provide a confidence score of which category a keyword fits in," he said.

The Content Ads program has been in beta with several advertisers since October, and more U.S. advertisers will begin to see their campaigns show up in Microsoft's Content Ads program as early as this week, according to the adCenter team. Advertisers were selected based on how well their ads match the inventory currently available in the pilot. Plans call for a roll-out to all customers shortly after the pilot concludes.

Unlike most other contextual ad programs, Content Ads is not yet open to third-party publisher sites. Instead, ads will appear on Microsoft properties, such as MSN, MSN Money, Dating and Personals. Advertisers will have the option to opt out of the Content Ads program at any time, or to set separate bids for keywords to display on content pages.

Many search marketers have seen early success with adCenter, though a common lament is for more traffic, as long as quality does not go down. Microsoft is hoping Content Ads will be one answer to the inventory problem."