Microsoft Adding Ask Sponsored Listings To AdManager

Microsoft has included Ask Sponsored Listings to its AdManager Service on Office Live. Previously, Live Search and MSN networks were the only two ad distribution options, in which advertisers must buy ads via Microsoft Adcenter. Now small businesses can purchase and manage paid search ads through AdManager, which is a simple interface.

To help your business get noticed in search results with adManager, follow these simple steps:

Sign up with Microsoft Office Live

Create your Web site

Activate adManager

As a new advertiser, you will be given an ad credit of $50 to spend through AdManager.

As a late starter of the PPC advertising platform (comparing to Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing), Microsoft has been trying to expand its reach with quality search distribution partners. There must be speculations on whether eventually Microsoft’s paid search ads should replace that piece of ad space on Ask Sponsored Listings altogether, which would give Microsoft 5% US search market share increase.

US Search Market Share in May 2007, according to comScore: