Officially launches adCenter in France; provides advanced audience intelligence and targeting capabilities.

Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of the MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform division, yesterday opened the second annual Advertising Week 2005 in New York City by announcing the official launch of adCenter in France and Singapore.

According to the company, adCenter powers a paid-search service from MSN that provides advanced audience intelligence and targeting capabilities to help advertisers improve their return on investment when it comes to paid-search advertising. The official launch of adCenter in France yesterday and Singapore on Aug. 31 follows pilot programs in both countries. Whereas the U.S. testing of adCenter is set to begin in October.

MSN also said that adCenter will become a one-stop shop from which advertisers can manage all their MSN advertising campaigns, end to end, including display and direct ads. The system competes with Google's AdWords program and will eventually replace a keyword-based advertising program that MSN contracts out to Yahoo.

"We're excited by the positive feedback we have received from advertisers thus far," Mehdi said. "The launch of adCenter in France and Singapore is a great first step to delivering on our global vision to connect advertisers to consumers in a much more meaningful way."