• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 26, 2023

Loyal customers are not easy to come by, and promoting a product or website to gain more traffic from search or other media might be an afterthought for many businesses.

For some small publishers, attempts to refresh content to stay on top of changes to Google’s and Microsoft’s search indexes has become a nightmare. But developers at Microsoft Advertising believe they have a solution through a U.S. pilot program that requires a small tag inserted on the company’s website. 

The revamped pubCenter program, a project that Microsoft launched about 15 years ago, requires publishers to insert a tag to enable personalized and relevant native and display ads that match consumer intent. It aims to help creators and small to medium-sized publishers earn revenue or offset costs, and allows publishers to determine the number of ads that will serve up and where they are placed on the site, as well as block content that is not relevant to site visitors.

Similar to AdSense, publishers pick an ad format and add website codes to earn revenue each time an ad is served on the website. The system will only serve ads when it can predict a higher bid. 

Keeping up with changes can become expensive, especially if the publisher depends on outside sources to support content.

While advertisers compete for ad space across the Microsoft Advertising Network, bloggers and website owners are trying to build an audience with strong content, such as secrets on best local places to hike or restaurants to visit.

The ad is intended to serve up alongside relevant content. For instance, if a publisher has monetized its site with Google AdSense and now is interested in trying another ad network, pubCenter can enable mediation with existing Google AdSense account, and increase revenue made from advertising through Microsoft pubCenter.

More traffic to a website means more revenue. An engaged audience with impactful ads can keep them, making it less likely that they will click away.

Microsoft Advertising believes pubCenter puts the changes in the publisher’s hands because through this solution it can decide how to manage and direct ad inventory.

Microsoft did not describe the technology used to redesign and relaunch the system, but it likely has been rebuilt with generative artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies.