LiveSide - News blog : Gatineau

Microsoft adCenter Analytics (was Gatineau) to shut down

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:33:45 GMT

According to an email to beta testers, and a blog post and a post on the adCenter website, adCenter Analytics will shut down on Dec 31, 2009, and no new beta participants are being accepted as of today. From the blog post:

Our objectives at the outset were to serve the needs of small and midsize self-service customers, as well as evolve the Microsoft strategy to address the Web analytics space.

The insights you’ve contributed through your feedback and your use of the tool have served an invaluable purpose in shaping Microsoft’s future in this space. You’ve helped us work towards making an informed decision about building a general Web analytics solution, and despite the end of life plan, the beta was very much a success.

It enabled us to confidently determine that we can be of most value to advertisers and publishers by offering a tailored solution that meets more specialized needs.

adCenter Analytics started as a standalone beta called Gatineau in October 2007, and then was integrated into the adCenter website. According to a comment from blog poster Mel Carson from adCenter Analytics, the closing of this beta does not indicate that the adCenter Publisher program, also in beta, is in danger of closing:

Publisher is NOT closing and is very much part of Microsoft Advertising's ongoing strategy in this space.

At the end of the beta period any analytics information will no longer be available, and beta testers are urged to save their information. The blog post lists a number of alternative analytics products, more information on the blog post.

Microsoft adCenter Analytics (Project Gatineau) releases Beta 2

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:50:40 GMT

Microsoft's analytics piece of their adCenter product has just received an update, and a quick run-through shows some new features, significantly improved performance, and the end of the $5 sign-up fee (although I'm not finding a link to the free account setup as of yet, but here is the Project Gatineau sign up page). Amit Fulay, a Lead Program Manager on the adCenter team, posts some more information:

Some of the key Beta 2 features are:

Free analytics-only account. We listened to the customer feedback and have removed the $5 adCenter sign up fee.

New tool for auto-tagging your web site

Commerce ROI reports

3rd party paid search campaign import for Google and Yahoo! paid search campaigns

Campaign timeline report

Tree-map reports for Traffic and Inbound referrals

Age-Gender composite segment

Domain white-listing (only data from domains you specify are included in reports)

Visitor loyalty metrics (depth & length of visit, frequency, loyalty, new versus returning visitors)

We have a LiveSide account set up, here's one screenshot:

And in some related web analytics news, Bret Grinslade will be in a panel at Mix 08 talking about Silverlight and web analytics - "how to incorporate ... web analytics services into Silverlight applications and then take advantage of the separation between the design in XAML and code in JavaScript to do effective A/B testing." Only problem is that there are so many sessions worth attending, many at the same time. Mix 08 sessions are slated to be available 24 hours after they are presented, however.

adCenter Gatineau web analytics beta now available in other countries

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:50:39 GMT

Gatineau, the code name for the web analytics beta run as a tab in Microsoft adCenter, will soon be available outside the US, in the UK, France, and Canada.

The service features fancy graphics, integrated demographics data for web visitors using Windows Live ID, integration with adCenter, and probably a lot more as the beta is still in the early stages of development.

You can sign up for the beta.

Mix n Mash: on Mix08, Feedsync, Silverlight, and an hour with Bill Gates

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:08:00 GMT

LiveSide is an enthusiasts website. We follow Windows Live because we're intrigued by the promise of the software and services, and we're honored to have developed a following and a reputation as a reliable source of news about Windows Live. Most of the rewards we get are not monetary (by any means), but we're excited to watch our traffic steadily grow, thankful for the links we get from influential tech sites, and amazed, really, that we recently climbed as high as #30 on the Techmeme Leaderboard.

However our invitation to today's Mix n Mash event, held at the Executive Briefing Center on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, has been a highpoint, to say the least. LiveSide was invited, along with 8 other bloggers and web developers, to spend the day talking about Microsoft and more, concluding with an hour long conversation with Bill Gates.

While much of the day was not Windows Live specific (Chris has already posted on Feedsync, which was the focus of one presentation), we spent a very interesting day, starting with a 2 hour conversation about Silverlight with Scott Guthrie, a hands on demo of Surface and a demo of Popfly, a brief conceptual talk about Feedsync, an overview of adCenter Gatineau with some early looks at Beta 2 (expected sometime in early 2008), and then on to our hour with Bill Gates.

Here's the list of attendees:

Kip Kniskern – www.liveside.net staff writer

Molly Holzschlag – www.molly.com IE Standards

Jesse Warden – www.jessewarden.com Flash developer

Jonathan Snook – www.snook.ca/jonathan Web designer

Keith Peters – www.bit-101.com Flash developer

Kelly Goto – www.gotomobile.com Goto Media, Goto Mobile

Erik Natzke – http://jot.eriknatzke.com Flash developer

Julie Lerman – www.thedatafarm.com/blog Developer

Rob Howard – http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward CEO, Telligent Systems (maker of Community Server)

We were not able to take individual pictures of Bill, or post recordings of the event, but a transcript of the conversation will be released tomorrow, along with a picture of us with the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, which of course we will post with commentary. I asked Bill how he thought Windows Live was doing, and while there were no surprises in his answer, LiveSide still asked Bill Gates a Windows Live question, and he answered, and how cool is that?

The event was planned as a way to get conversations started about Mix08. We talked to Scott Guthrie about how Mix is becoming a platform for announcements, and when asked by Julie Lerman whether there would be anything at Mix08 that had never been disclosed before, any new technology, Scott said "yes". Later, during the Bill Gates question and answer period, when Molly Holzschlag asked Bill about Internet Explorer 8, one of the Microsoft employees clarified a discussion on when IE 8 would be discussed, saying "there will be disclosures on IE8 during the Mix08 timeframe". We were planning to go to Mix08 anyway (already booked hotel and airfare) but as each of the attendees was presented a pass to attend the conference in Las Vegas in March 2008, we might not need to wash dishes at the Las Vegas Convention Center to be able to afford the conference ;).

We'll be posting more about some of these technologies, and more about Mix soon (want to have the official transcript in hand before attempting to quote anything Bill Gates said). Been kind of a whirlwind of a day, but one that will be long remembered

adCenter Gatineau beta launches: Microsoft website analytics

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:15:00 GMT

While not strictly a Windows Live product, website analysis is an important tool that has been missing from Microsoft's toolkit. That changed today, as Microsoft's new addition to its adCenter suite of advertiser and website owner tools, code named Gatineau, was released into beta. Ian Thomas has a lot more on his blog entry.

Gatineau is accessible as a tab on adCenter, which requires an adCenter account, which at this time requires a credit card and a one time $5 charge. Thomas calls this requirement "regrettable", and temporary.

More info on the adCenter blog

Sign up for the Gatineau beta (invites will be rolling out in the next days and weeks, so be patient if you've already signed up for the beta)

Microsoft tests Gatineau - AdCenter analytics service

Chris — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:52:00 GMT

Ian Thomas and Reeves Little today confirmed that MSN AdCenter is alpha testing a new analytics tool, codenamed Gatineau. Based on technology acquired from DeepMetrix and likely to be a direct competitor to Google Analytics, its unsurprising that details are being kept quiet at this early stage in development.

Here's a few extra things we've heard:

Performance tracking of AdCenter keywords
Website profiles for tracking multiple sites (similar to Google Analytics)
Permission based control around reports and settings on a per site basis using Windows Live ID

As Ian points out, this is a pre-beta product so subject to change. If you're interested in beta testing it in the future, he has included his email address in his blog post.

All we need now is AdCenter to syndicate MSN's Content Ads onto non-Microsoft sites and Google may have a serious competitor. It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that the AdCenter team has been researching this topic with site owners, though how long until we see an AdCenter powered publisher network is still uncertain.