• ZDnet , Tuesday, September 9, 2008 2:01 PM

Joshua Greenbaum digs into a new product coming out of Microsoft aimed at helping advertisers determine the ROI of all of their search campaigns, and explains how it might be the software giant's most powerful assault on Google thus far.

"Here's what Microsoft and its CRM team are up to," Greenbaum says. "Coming to CRM Online this fall--and for the low, low price of 'free,' no less--is a new feature that lets Microsoft CRM customers track the success of their search word-based web marketing campaigns. The concept is simple: capture the leads as generated by your favorite search engine, and then analyze how those leads translate into actual sales for your company."

Advertisers will get to see whether their search spend is having a material impact on on- and offline sales, since the CRM Online platform tracks completed orders. "And, over time, you have a pretty accurate picture of how well that search engine you pay your big marketing bucks to is actually performing, in dollars and cents," Greenbaum says.

Greenbaum argues that if the data proved that Google AdWords wasn't as successful as many marketers believed, and that if Microsoft were to anonymize, aggregate and then publish it, the industry could be in for a huge shock. "Because suddenly the myth of Ad Word advertising would be faced with the reality of sales, and, well, I think the results would be sobering for anyone who thinks Google is invincible and a welcome revelation for anyone who thinks there's more to marketing than Google Ad Words," he says.

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