Over the last few months, Microsoft has been tweaking the daily budget capabilities in its API in an effort to make its system simpler and easier to use. As of earlier this month, any new or edited campaigns included the Daily Budget with Monthly Maximum option, which calculates a monthly maximum based on advertisers' daily budget. Now, AdCenter will begin calculating the monthly maximum for all campaigns, as of June 1. The calculated monthly maximum equals the daily budget value multiplied by the average number of days in a month. If advertisers prefer to manage their budgets on a monthly [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: APIs

Google is retiring its Base API and replacing it with two shopping-centric APIs, requiring developers to modify applications that manage and search product data.  Google Base will be shuttered permanently as of June 1, 2011. The Content API for Shopping will be used for uploading data, and the Search API for Shopping for accessing product data. The Content API can be used to add, delete, query or modify any item individually or with a batch protocol. The Search API is aimed at helping Google Affiliate Network publishers and Google Commerce Search customers. Both of the new APIs use the [...]

Related Topics: Google: APIs | Google: Base | Google: Product Search | Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: APIs

Microsoft announced today that app developers can now download the Bing Map App SDK and start building applications to submit to the Bing Map App Gallery. Developers can download the maps SDK at connect.microsoft.com/bingmapapps. Then once you start developing your apps, you can test the app in the new maps developer sandbox. Make sure to check out the Bing Maps Gallery to get new ideas and start building your own mashups. Of course, Bing is not the only one with map APIs. Google has a Google Maps API, Yahoo has a Yahoo Maps API and so does MapQuest. [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: APIs | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local

Danny and I had an opportunity to talk with Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi and Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider earlier this morning. Both were instrumental in the deal and will be deeply involved going forward. They characterized the parties' search integration as a long-term partnership, which implies ongoing cooperation and a high degree of collaboration. We had a limited time to get a range of questions out but we were able to get a bit more clarity than we had from just the conference call and press release this morning. Yahoo is going to be doing "premium search" sales. What is "premium searc [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: APIs | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Top News | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Search Ads

Microsoft today released version 2.0 of its Live Search API, also called "Silk Road," that offers support for multiple data exchange protocols, access to more search resources and the ability for developers to pull in ads to help monetize search applications they build. The previous version of the Live Search API only supported SOAP as a way to pull search information into a site or application. The new version supports JSON, RSS and XML. The types of search data that can be retrieved and used have been expanded. In addition to things like web search results, spelling suggestio [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: APIs