Microsoft was the last of the Big Three search engines off the starting blocks, but as is so often the case with anything the Redmond, Washington, company does, it has been successful in snaring millions of users. In fact, MSN now claims to attract more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month, with localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages.

Click here for MSN network demographic stats.

Microsoft has introduced a variety of new products and services on MSN over the past few months. At the seventh annual MSN Strategic Account Summit, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the launch of Microsoft adCenter, an online advertising platform that serves all paid search traffic on Microsoft online properties in the U.S. market.

In this third piece in iMedia's series of looks at the big portals, we’ll review MSN’s capabilities and interactive marketing opportunities in content, search, ecommerce, email/IM/voice and research tools.

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