Microsoft Corp may soon be able to tell whether an Internet search query comes from a man or a woman.
The feature may help advertisers make search-related pitches more relevant to their intended audiences, said Jed Nahum, a Microsoft director of product management.
Microsoft, the world's largest software company, is developing advertising technologies to bolster its MSN Internet unit and fight Google Inc and Yahoo! Inc for a larger share of the online ad market. The new features are being developed at a Microsoft research lab in Beijing, Nahum said.
"There's a confidence interval around one's gender," Nahum said in a telephone interview. "Advertisers can start to tailor their message based on those estimates. Using the new technology, Microsoft will be able to tell, for example, that someone searching for the term `Dodge Caravan' is more likely to be female than someone searching for `Dodge' alone."
Microsoft plans to include the feature in its search and advertising software in the next year.
Microsoft, lagging Google and Yahoo in share of Internet searches, said in a statement that more than 50 researchers are working on about 40 advertising projects at the Beijing center.
The company demonstrated the technologies on Friday at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Nahum said.
Another feature may allow people to request more information on products featured in movies or on television. Viewers of Sex and the City, for example, could click on clothes worn by the actresses, Nahum said. That will require more advanced digital television networks and will take longer to develop, he said.
"It adds an element of trackability to product placement that hadn't been there before," Nahum said.
Microsoft needs to find new revenue sources after sales grew 8 percent last year, the slowest ever. Chief executive Steve Ballmer, 49, said in December he's focused on making advertising one of Microsoft's fastest-growing businesses.
Shares of Microsoft rose 5 cents to US$27.19 at 4pm New York time in NASDAQ Stock Market composite trading. They declined 2.1 percent last year.
Microsoft also is testing a new version of its adCenter product, which allows companies to buy ads linked to Internet search results. The tests are being conducted in Singapore and France. Microsoft currently uses technology from Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo to link ads to search results.
Advertisers are interested in the new adCenter because it lets them use demographic data to target specific groups, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co analyst Charles Di Bona wrote in a note on Friday.
