Microsoft plays catch-up against Yahoo and Google in advertising

Microsoft is playing catch-up against Yahoo and Google -- its chief competitors in the booming online advertising market -- with a new program called adCenter Excellence introduced today.

Like the maneuvers of Yahoo and Google, Microsoft's program is a bid to make customers jump ship. But although Microsoft's tools offering comes later than those of either Yahoo or Google, the company's timing could still be good.

Some analysts are projecting that the surge in online ad spending which marked the period from 2001 to 2006 is likely to maintain its momentum for at least five years.

 Personally i don't think Microsoft is going to be as good as Google, Microsoft is really mean when it comes to money. As i can see even if they haven't started properly yet but their minimum bid price is us 0.05$, i remember myself advertising on Google only on 0.03$ some times. On the top of everything there is no publisher program launched yet, so i cannot publish adcenter's ads on my website. How does that sounds?