MSN AdCenter has been going on for a while now, but many people are asking when the MSN publisher program called ContentAds (I’m calling it MSN PubCenter) will go live? In 2005, people at SEO Roundtable started talking about the Microsoft contextual advertising program going into beta, but MSN at this time was mum about the possibility of this program.

In 2006, the word leaked out that ContentAds was not only in beta but going live that year and like many unofficial deadlines, the time-frame for the beta slipped and then slided again in 2007. Will this be the year that MSN ContentAds goes live or is Microsoft watching Yahoo struggle with its beta publisher program and drafting them in this race?

The recent word is that the ContentAds closed-beta is still a work-in-progress as only a few select publishers have been asked to join. Their ads are appearing on the Microsoft properties such as Windows Live, MSN Money and MSN Real Estate.

With Google AdSense dominating the field and raking in billions of dollars in advertising revenue, it’s only a matter of time until MSN, Yahoo and even Ask.com open up their publisher programs to the public. Then again, perhaps the invitation-only publisher model is attractive to the search giants right now as they have more control over the quality and content of where the ads appear.

But, from a publisher’s perspective, the more alternatives there are to AdSense the more control they can have over the ads being served on their sites and the more potential earnings are to be made.

Filed under: Ad Programs