I’ve been using MSN AdCenter for a couple months and developed a list of questions (observations) that I will get answered next week and will post to this blog.  I just left this list of questions for MSN on the MSN Blog.  Hopefully they will address all of them in the SES sessions next week and to me personally in more detail.

Here’s my questions to MSN (feel free to answer before the SES show).

I’ve been using Ad Center for several months and I’d like more information on a couple of things that are not well explained on the MSN Ad Center site

1. I noticed MSN is using MOSAIC Geo-Demographics system. How does MSN decide who falls into what Geo-Demographic cluster? 

a. What database processes are used to assign a searhcer to a particular cluster group (ie: metropolitian strugglers)?

2. Noticed Data between previous month and current month is inconsistent (at least, in the version previous to last weekends’ update). What is MSN doing to make the data more consistant between previous months (and to increase the numbers of months of data available to do research with)?

3. In the current version of MSN AdCenter there is not way to export the profile data so we can do trending over time.  How does MSN plan to address this issue?

4. I seemed to notice that Ad Center would add my own queries in the tool to the searches the keyword research tool to the following month’s search totals. 

Is Ad Center learning about what to search for based on the queries that are entered into the Research tool?

5. Does MSN plan to explain the information contained in the x and y axis that are produced in the MSN trend charts.   It’s not clear to me, when looking at these charts - what percentage of the search market the searches represent, yet the charts suggest, in some cases, that values are part of a share of traffic.

6. MSN Profiler is supposed to be the way to you take the Demographics information in MSN Ad Center and apply it to MSN Advertising.  But the Profiler, and least, in the US Market, does not fully work.  Why is that?  When is it going to be fixed?

When you locate MSN properties based on age, sex or income, the property categories are listed but you get a browser error when you try to see the actual sites that are represented.  This feature seems to work in the European versions of MSN Profiler.

7. Does MSN’s move into Geo-Demographics and Psycho-graphics force Google and Yahoo to do the same?

 8. Why did MSN Choose the MOSAIC system with only 10-12 cluster groups when it could have chosen PRIZM or similar products that have over 60 cluster groups?  

Is the issue with assigning people to a Geo-demographic cluster (asking them questions that will assign them) or is it processor limitations at MSN that prevent going to a more complete Geo-demographic system….and who made the original decision to go with MOSAIC?

I’ll stop by the MSN Booth to get some answers to these questions and will be representing Know More Media blog network for this show.   If possible I’d like to interview someone from MSN for my blog network.