Web Affiliate Marketing Blog

Whilst I was having a play around with MS adCenter, and I stumbled across Microsoft’s adCenter Labs and thought it was worth a blog post. It’s Microsoft’s development or beta area for all things adCenter related, some of which could prove useful to all affiliates not only PPC’ers.

In summary, there are 12 tools that are accessible by double clicking on an option from the spinning menu (as usual with Microsoft, the GUI is simple to use). I have listed the items I think are the most useful below with copy excerts from the Microsoft website;

Demographics Prediction
You can use adCenter technology to predict a customer’s age, gender, and other demographic information according to his or her online behavior-that is, from search queries and webpage views.

Detecting Sensitive Webpages
Sensitive Content Detection helps you determine whether a webpage contains content that might be considered sensitive by general public.For example, content about porn, terrorism, or crime.

Detecting Online Commercial Intention
Microsoft adCenter can detect your customers’ intention to purchase products or acquire information. For example, if a customer searches for LCD monitor, it is likely that he or she wants to purchase an LCD monitor; therefore, the online commercial intention is strong, with a confidence level greater than 0.5.

Keyword Group Detection
This essential tool helps you find groups of words that are related or similar to your input keywords. Common misspellings are also included in the detected word groups.

Search Result Clustering
Microsoft adCenter’s Search Result Clustering (SRC) technology can cluster search results into semantically related groups in real time and then help your customers browse through the long list of search results.

Keyword Mutation Detection
This tool displays common misspellings or alternative representations of your input keywords. Keyword mutations are misspelled or alternative representations of keywords that are frequently found in search query logs.

Search Volume Seasonality Forecast
Forecast seasonality patterns of search queries.Some good examples of seasonality are queries on wedding gowns, football scores, and homework help.

Search Funnels
Customers often perform searches by typing related keywords in specific sequences.You can use the adCenter search funnel tool to help visualize and analyze your customers’ search behaviors. For example, you can learn how many people search for BMW and then search for Mercedes Benz, Audi, and other automobiles.

Pop along to http://adlab.msn.com and have a play yourself and let me know what you think.