From ClickZ News:

NEW YORK – Microsoft’s MSN has launched its paid search service in France and Singapore, according to the portal’s SVP Yusuf Mehdi.

Mehdi described the service, which is powered by MSN’s in-development adCenter platform, during his keynote address at the kick-off of Advertising Week in New York.

The features resemble those now available through Google AdSense and Yahoo! Search Marketing, but with some twists. They include a manual keyword selection tool, a “site analyzer” keyword suggestion module, demographic targeting, and assistance with budget allocation. The launches — today in France and on August 31 in Singapore — follow pilot programs in both countries.

The service is the first component of a total ad management platform that the Microsoft will use to sell media across all its channels and properties. Mehdi said adCenter will offer media planning and buying across everything from Web to e-mail to interactive TV.

Mehdi admitted the current functionality is “paid search as you know it today, but we introduced better audience intelligence. You can do amazing research even before you start a campaign.”

He said, for instance, that wine marketers in the French beta have called up detailed demographic information on who searches for “vin” (wine) by age.

Full article here.

There’s also a generally positive review of the service in a thread on Webmasterworld . Here’s a summary of the main points, but you may want to bookmark the thread as more information will probably be added:

* Ad management interface is clean and basic. Very easy to use and understand. I am reminded of the AW system in that of the design, interface, and usability.

* Allows you to create and manage multiple accounts under one basic username.

* The metrics given back via the MSN keyword tool are really cool. You can view demand for each KW/KP, but then also break each of those into charts containing traffic trends (time), gender trends (M/F), and geographic stats (LA, San Diego, Paris, etc). Additionally, you are given similar terms/phrases if you choose to see them.

* The Price Estimation tool allows you to gauge how much you will be paying for your position. However you have to bust out your calculator and do some math to figure out the number of clicks as they don’t give you that metric.

* Reports are very easy to generate and view. They allow you to create reports on all types of data including dates, performance, targeting, and the neatest of all – by time ranges (AM/PM style!).

* Ability to serve ads by time ranges. IE: Serve this ad for the following keywords in the “morning” only please.

* Signup fee of approx $5 USD. After signup, you pay for clicks on your ads.

* Minimum cost per click (CPC) is stated at $0.10

* Allows you to submit base bids for keywords. This is the maximum amount you are willing to pay when someone clicks your ad.

* Targeted bidding allows you to add amounts to your base bid to increase the possibility that your ad will show to Search users who fit your “buyer profile.” Targeted bidding can include the following:
-Users in a specific geographic location
-Users searching on specific days of the week or during a specific part of the day
-Users of a specific gender or age

When you select to “target” bidding towards, lets say by age, you can choose the CPC for each individual age range. For example, if I were selling a product tailored to older people, I might setup my targeted bidding as:

Age – CPC
18-25: $.05
25-30: $.05
30-45: $.10
45-60: $.15
60+: $.20

* Ad headline is 25 characters, ad copy is 70.

* The bulk upload spreadsheets are the nicest I’ve seen for any PPC.

The MSN Adcenter BETA is currently by invitation only and should be available in the US next month. You can register for updates from MSN here.