MSN AdCenter RoadShow Hits NYC

I had the pleasure of attending MSN's AdCenter RoadShow today at the Helmsley Hotel in NY City. About 50 search engine marketers, mostly from agencies attended this 3 hour training and informational seminar. One interesting thing for me was their vision on how they plan to integrate all of their advertising products within the AdCenter. They hinted at the possibility that you could eventually purchase all of your advertising on MSN through the AdCenter in a self serve environment. Building on Steve Ballmer's recent announcement that Microsoft will be spending more than $1 Billion on research and development, MSN is clearly out to be a serious player not only in search but in all online advertising. There are clearly some issues and bugs that need to be worked out with AdCenter before it can really compete, but it looks like they've got a good start.