I saw this post today from Henry Blodget called Update on MSN: Still Going Nowhere Fast and it reminded me of a post I've been meaning to make. Henry makes a lot of great points, but I'd like to add a few to it (you can read the post yourself for a summary) by focusing on his comments on search and AdCenter.
I love the AdCenter platform and the only and I mean the only issue I have with it is the lack of traffic which is a pretty important attribute to have when conducting search engine marketing. I checked out one of our clients keywords and since most of our Connell Donatelli clients are politicians it was very easy to compare between the three platforms Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Basically what I found and then checked this across the board is the MSN has about 10% of Yahoo's search traffic; that's not 10% of Google, but Yahoo, and very rarely do we max out our daily budget (BTW - Yahoo is about 40%-50% of Google). Searchers don't use MSN at an acceptable level for marketers. Which gets back to another point that Henry made which is just want the Google is going on with MSN?
Are the search results inferior at MSN? Well, probably not since I'm talking about PPC advertising and as I said above I love the platform because it makes it easy to figure out what is working and how you handle the match process. My thought is that they need to work the demand side of the search instead of paying money for full page ads in the Wall Street Journal targeting the media buyers. Sophisticated advertisers know they can use the platform for marketing, the problem they will find is a lack of traffic. I haven't seen anything out of MSN that leads me to believe that they are marketing their platform to users. Sure, there is the new Internet Explorer and Vista on the way but why would you think that is going to change user behavior? A focus solely on driving search traffic should be the only search advertising MSN does these days.
Sexy platform? Absolutely. Great charts and search tools? Yes. Traffic to use those tools on? Priceless if they had them.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
********UPDATE*************
Of course I forgot about Ms Dewey which is MSN's sexy viral version of their search platform. Obviously they are trying to use this to boost traffic especially with the male demographic (type in David Wright or leave the screen up to see what she does and shows off), however, I still think they need to do more than Ms.Dewey unless this is more than just a cheap (one) trick pony. She is fun and cute, but not sure it will shift behavior from Google.
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