Microsoft launching pilot paid search program
These days search engines seem just as concerned with keeping up with each other as providing good service to their users. As the No. 3 search engine behind Google and Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN is playing catch-up once again. Microsoft plans to start a service where clients will pay to be listed alongside MSN search results. The pilot program will be introduced tomorrow. Google and Yahoo already offer similar paid listing services. MSN will provide advertisers with tools to help them determine what search keywords to purchase and what type of ads are best for targeting their customers. Microsoft has spent between $100 million and $300 million trying to build its own search capabilities.

Martha's chat with fans: Bracelet's a pain in the ...
With a new talk show in the works, it makes perfect sense for Martha Stewart to get in the habit of charming an audience. The expert in domestic grace got a chance to chat with fans online from her kitchen yesterday. She said that the electronic monitoring bracelet she must wear on her ankle while being confined to her home in Bedford, N.Y., is uncomfortable, but she's been keeping her mind off it with projects such as preparing kielbasa for Easter dinner. Stewart was released from prison on March 4 after serving five months in prison for lying to investigators about a stock trade. She will spend an additional five months under house arrest, though she is permitted to go to work and returned there last week. She has two TV shows in the works for this fall, one a daytime talk show and the other a spinoff of the NBC hit "The Apprentice," both produced by Mark Burnett.

Once-wobbly AOL predicts bigger, better ad year
America Online has struggled to remain competitive and relevant with so many inexpensive internet service alternatives popping up and years of inflated advertising deals behind it. But the internet company is seeing some improvement, at least in the ad arena. Officials said yesterday that AOL's online ad revenue growth should exceed the projected 20 to 25 percent average growth for the U.S. online ad industry this year. Earlier projections had it matching the average internet growth. AOL expects to pick up 1 to 1.5 percentage point in market share by the end of this year. That comes two years after the company slashed its ad outlook by more than 50 percent in the wake of questionable ad deals made during the height of the dot.com boom five years ago. The company hopes the ad revenue boost will offset its steadily declining dial-up internet subscriber base.

Crunched cookies hurt sites' ability to track users
As web users become more sophisticated, they’re also becoming more cautious. A new study from Jupiter Research finds that 58 percent of internet users have deleted cookies, the files on retail, entertainment and other business web sites that upload to a user’s computer. Sites use cookies to track visitor behavior in order to personalize their offerings or improve what they’ve already got. Many sites also use cookies to plan ad and marketing campaigns. But consumers have caught on. Jupiter found that 39 percent perform a cookie purge monthly. Though cookies are usually harmless, it’s no surprise web users are worried. Between phishing schemes, viruses, spyware and all the other now-standard hazards on the internet, it’s hard to know what’s harmless. Forty-four percent of respondents to the Jupiter study said they thought deleting or blocking cookies helped protect them.