Microsoft Introduces New “Search Engine Marketing Service” to Boost Dynamics CRM’s Advertising Oomph

Microsoft is integrating a new "search engine marketing service" into Dynamics CRM that enables users to place online advertising and monitor results.

The service, which bears a resemblance to Google AdWords, was introduced as part of a keynote address at Convergence 2008 by Kirill Tatarinov, vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, on Wednesday. He said after his speech that the new service is immediately available to users of CRM 4.0 and CRM Live, and is intended partly to leverage potential benefits from advertising on MSN, Microsoft's search engine.

Tatarinov announced two other somewhat-less-glamorous CRM-based marketing programs -- a service to sell excess user inventory on eBay and a merchant credit card service.

As part of his presentation, Tatarinov had Bruce Kasrel, a senior product manager, demonstrate the search-engine service to the several thousand Convergence attendees.

According to Kasrel, the service "talks with Microsoft adCenter, and adCenter is a platform for placing ads on sites like Live Search, MSN, and even Facebook. And so this service lets you create, edit, and manage your campaigns right within your Dynamics software."

He then conducted a demonstration with CRM Live, beginning by selecting key word search terms for a hypothetical product, and pausing to adjust the campaign after initial results came in.

"We can see right here in our interface, we're going to see what are we starting with, what's our budget, what are we targeting for impressions and things like that. So now I'm going to go ahead and resume the campaign and we're going to go ahead and edit that campaign and maybe ...