In the face of recurrent search losses, this week Microsoft showed off what its much-touted adCenter Labs has been working on. At Demo Fest in Redmond, Mr. Softie showcased what the company called "breakthrough digital tools" focused on improving keyword and content technologies, ad selection and relevance, audience intelligence, social networking, video, platforms, and devices.

In all, 60 new technologies were unveiled at Demo Fest. But the really buzzworthy ones, if the hype swirling out of Redmond like a great big smug cloud is to be believed, have to do with search (and video, to be addressed later). Here's a breakdown of the adCenter tools Microsoft wants you to know about.



Keyword Services Platform



A set of Web service APIs for building intelligent applications for online advertising, including keyword recommendation, forecasting, categorization, and monetization. The KSP is intended to help third-party search engine marketers build their campaigns.



Commercial Intent Detection



Keyword analysis that differentiates between buying consumers and researching consumers. The CID algorithm compares search queries with terms most often used by online shoppers versus terms used by those just looking. The tool generates a score that estimates likelihood to buy.



For example, Microsoft says the term "LCD monitor" carries commercial intention of 0.74 out of a possible 1.0



Sensitive Content Detection



A technology that determines whether a Webpage contains potentially objectionable content like pornography, crime, or terrorism. Automatic identification of such material can allow advertisers to avoid their messages being associated with it. Microsoft says it can also help the user experience by warning searchers about content in the SERPs.



Query Entity Detection



A smart technology said to understand multiword queries and word pairings. "Real estate agent," for example, is different than "real estate."



Contextual Advertising



What Microsoft calls "a new paradigm," isn't that new and is what all the major competitors are shooting for (perhaps like many of these unveiled offerings). AdCenter Lab's categorization technology is expected to simplify the work of online advertisers by grouping queries into concepts rather than keywords.





Tag: Mircrosoft, adCenter



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