• by Shankar Gupta , June 2, 2005

MSN Wednesday launched a print, radio, online, and outdoor advertising campaign to promote its music site, MSN Music.

The campaign, which targets markets in major cities around the United States, features the tagline "Meet MSN Music," and includes popular artists like Gwen Stefani, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, and Beyonce. The print buys include newspaper ads in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, as well as magazine ads in Rolling Stone. In conjunction with the ad campaign, MSN will allow downloaders to get five songs free when they purchase one.

MSN will also be promoting the service on its own sites, including all the MSN entertainment properties, Hotmail, and placements on MSN Messenger. In addition to the MSN properties, the campaign has buys on a host of other entertainment sites such as Ticketmaster, Citysearch, AllMusic.com, MP3.com, Vibe.com, CNET Networks, Friendster.com, MySpace.com, and several ad-serving networks like FastClick and ValueClick. The online creatives will be banners, text links, buy buttons, and page takeovers.

The outdoor component consists of wall ads and billboards in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, as well as ads in subways, bus stops, and phone kiosks.

The campaign also includes a large radio component, including cable and satellite radio along with broadcast radio in the major metropolitan markets.

The campaign will run until the end of June, and the buy-one-get-five-free promotion is scheduled to end on July 10.