More on AdCenter and Long Tail Advertising

Further to my comments about Adcenter, relying on MSN and Live profile information for the purposes of targeting advertising seems unreliable to me. Perhaps Microsoft is hoping that the majority of users who sign up for online systems like MSN, Hotmail, and Live will enter their true profile information when signing up. If the majority of users knew that their profile information was being used to target advertising to them more effectively I doubt that the average user would be inclined to enter true profile information. Besides email service, which you can get through Gmail or a number of other sites, what other value add services does MSN provide that justify filling out a huge profile with all kinds of personal data.

To effectively target the long tail, specifically niche products (not airfare or hotels), advertisers are going to have to find more creative ways to draw attention to their products by forging relationships with niche sites or by using social networking sites like Everytrail.com, Gusto.com, or MyTripBooking.com. More and more users are going to be turning to these types of experience sharing sites to find out what is good and what is not. The reason is because the reviews are generally unbiased and unsolicited, read non-commercial. Although tastes may vary between users, the general concensus is that these types of sites focus on the experience rather than the product. The products become part of the overall experience and therefore simply become a means to an end rather than the end themselves.

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