Tech Shout!

MSN India, the Indian arm of Microsoft’s internet business, has announced they it plans to begin monetizing its internet search engine in a year’s time. MSN India plans to launch adCenter, in Indian by June 2007.

As of now adCenter is in beta and only US businesses can participate in it. Yahoo also has a similar product called YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network), which is also in beta and again is available for use by US companies. Obviously in a year’s time, both Yahoo and MSN will have made their presence in the search advertising business in India.

According to country manager, Jaspreet Bindra, MSN India’s search page would begin sporting India-specific sponsored links by June 7, 2007.

As of now, it is Google, the first company to realize the potential of internet search, who are the market leaders, followed by MSN and Yahoo. Google follows a very successful methodology called Adwords, whereby keywords are sold to advertisers, so that when a user searches on those keywords, the advertisers’ sites shows up.

Just like Google’s AdWords, MSN has developed its own adCenter and has a global tie-up with a specialized internet search marketing company called Overtures. Overtures, which has now been acquired by Yahoo, is expected to market the company’s search property in India.