What’s Good at Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs?

Microsoft AdCenter Labs is a site that explores and announces some of their latest technologies in the works.

So what should I check out in
Microsoft’s AdCenter labs?

Although many of the working demos showcased in Microsoft AdCenter Labs include functionality that can be found in both Google and Yahoo, there are a few that hold some merit.

Keyword Mutation Detection
Don’t be scared off by the name, this tool provides some handy functionality. Use it to find common misspellings for search terms. For example, “mississippi” returns: mississipp, mississppi, misssissippi, missisippi, misissippi, mississipi, and mississippi’s.

Search Funnels
Find out what people search for after the keyword you enter. In our example below, we start with the search for ‘travel’, and the Search Funnel shows us the top 5 keywords searched on after ‘travel’.

This can be used for competitor research, and keyword idea generation. In our example, you can see that Travelocity beats out their competitors to be the next most highest searched term after ‘travel’.

Search Result Clustering
Want to know how to logically segment the people searching for your products or services? Use this tool to cluster a keyword’s search result.

For example, when you use the tool on the keyword ‘travel’, it will return the following clusters in order of size:

• vacation travel
• travel guides
• world travel
• travel destinations
• travel packs
• travel services
• airline tickets
• car rentals
• and more…

Keyword Forecast
One of the more advanced demos within the AdCenter Labs is the Keyword Forecast tool. Unlike Google, this Keyword Forecast tool provides numbers associated with the search volume, and allows for trending across multiple keywords.

As you can see from the screen shot below, it will also provide estimates for age and gender distributions for each keyword entered.

Coming Soon to Microsoft AdCenter Labs:

French-English Translation Tool
This smart translation tool can translate your words within the right context.

Hierarchical Keyword Suggestion
Enter a keyword and display semantically related words that are organized hierarchically.

Keyword Price Estimation
Estimate the cost-per-click of any new paid search keywords, based on the cost of existing related keywords.

Keyword Extraction
Extract representative keywords from web page content.

Ads Delivery on Social Network
Leverage social networks to create a new ad delivery channel.

Behavioral Targeting System
Create precise, flexible behavioral segments by taking advantage of various data sources, including clickstream, search query, and demographic information.

To try out the demos and learn more, visit: Microsoft AdCenter Labs

Notice from Microsoft Labs: The tools shown on the adlabs website are not yet in production; they are demos or prototypes of tools that we might include as production adCenter tools in the future. Additionally, the tools do not provide or display conclusive results; rather, they are designed ro produce anecdotal information that might indicate a trend or behavior that seems pertinent to an individual advertiser. Finally, the information and results persented here are based on a sampling of real audience data, and are designed only to demonstrate a proof of concept.