While Google muscles in on the instant messaging scene, long a stronghold of Microsoft and Yahoo!, Microsoft bites back by introducing paid-search advertising by keywords on its own search engine.

When users of the Microsoft Live! search engine input keywords bought by advertisers, links to their websites appear at the top or side of the screen. But unlike its competitors, MSN Keywords is able to tell the advertiser what demographic of visitors are clicking its ads.

Their ‘intelligent’ backend systems recognize their users’ profiles, even if they have signed off and shut down their computers, said Ms. Eva Balan, marketing manager of Microsoft Advertising in South-East Asia.

She added that small- and medium-sized businesses would benefit from advertising with them because they can use the visitor reports to tailor their ad campaigns.

Budget-wise, it’s also more affordable for the SMEs, with a one-time sign-up fee of $10 and pay-per-click rates starting at 10 cents per keyword.

Currently, there are more than 400 million users of the Microsoft Network and 2.5 billion worldwide search queries each month.

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