Microsoft announced the opening its adCenter Incubation Lab (AdLab), a state-of-the-art research center in Bejing earlier today. AdLab is a joint project between MSN’s developing paid-advertising program adCenter and Microsoft Research. According to a Microsoft statement, the AdLab’s mission is to, “… research and incubate advanced technologies for MSN’s adCenter, designed to provide advertisers with rich targeting capabilities based on audience intelligence information.”

One of the technologies AdLab will be focused on is video hyperlink ads. The company claims it will be able to “detect product items displayed on a television screen during a show or commercial then zoom into products featured on the television screen and click through to detailed product descriptions and information on where the products can be bought.”

“Until now, there is no way for the user to actually interact with these ads in the video,” said Microsoft data-mining analyst Li Li in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

MSN is expected to release adCenter in the US in ealry June.

Reporters Without Boarders is a public interest group established to protect the right of reporters, journalists, and bloggers to witness and report on events.

It is calling on Internet users and bloggers to support six key proposals it issued last week “… aimed at ensuring that Internet-sector companies respect free expression when operating in repressive countries.” Read more…

A full weekend has passed since Larry Page made the last of what was assumed to be three major speeches from the heads of the three major search engines at the 2006 CES convention in Las Vegas. Page’s lackluster announcements on Google Pack and Google Video followed similar underwhelming performances by Yahoo’s Terry Semel and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Perhaps expectations had been placed too high by the press. Scheduled fresh on the heels of the Christmas-New Year’s slump, commentators and observers wrote highly speculative pieces, mostly about Google. By Friday afternoon however, what might have been, simply was not. Read more…

About a month ago, Scott Gardner from Fortune Interactive wrote a smart piece that got published in Webpronews, “What’s So Special About Search Marketing?” In it, he covers several points that demonstrate why search engine marketing, particularly search engine optimization is the most cost effective form of mass advertising. Read more…

Bill Gates opened the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last night calling this the decade of the digital lifestyle and workstyle. While his keynote speech only touched on search in general terms, he played down the threat of Google in an earlier interview and noted IBM as Microsoft’s chief competitor. Read more…

It all starts with a rumour. Someone said something to someone else and that someone told another person and before you can say, “cheese-doodle”, a wrong-story rumour grows out of control as speculation spreads it far and wide. Each retelling of the story adds another dimension, based on the teller’s assumptions and perspective. An interesting phenomenon has played out in the search engine press over the past two days, as a non-story about something Google is not doing grew into the imminent death of Microsoft almost overnight. Read more…

Happy New Year everyone! After a two-week slowdown, the North American business world is gearing up to its general terminal velocity. In the high-tech environment we work in, terminal velocity often appears to approach the speed of light. Being human beings however, we are not capable of moving as fast as light. Our working environment moves or changes faster than we can possibly keep up with. Read more…

It is that time of year again. Between the extra helpings of turkey soup and sandwiches, writers of every stripe are making lists of predictions for the coming twelve months. Last year, we got just over half our predictions correct. This year we hope to do as well or better but in an industry as dynamic and rapidly changing as the world of search, we couldn’t expect to hit a home run on every prediction. The only thing that is certain is the idea 2006 will be as or more interesting than 2005. Read more…

Many thanks to the readers and responders who nominated our blog as one of the top search engine optimization related blogs of 2005. In the end, we did not win however, we feel honoured to have been nominated and are pretty much pleased with the results. Read more…

Bill Slawski of WebAdvantage.net and Cre8asite Forums has made a list of companies and technologies acquired by Google over the past six years. For anyone interested in Google, especially search marketers, the post is a must-read.