Now, I'm not a huge fan of advertising when it's intrusive or detracts from the experience. I do however have a lot of respect for intelligent targeting and inventive engaging campaigns.

In this day and age we're faced with product and brand placement everywhere - billboards, TV, radio, online and even coming to cellphones and all that happens is people tune out.

I've got Google ads running on the side of this page - how many folks actually look at them, and of those how many click (actually, despite my cynicism it's not bad - this site is revenue neutral... advertising just about pays my hosting costs each year).

Anyway, I'm always on the look out for cool new technology that's going to make advertising more effective without it becoming more offensive at the same time. Luckily there's a group here at Microsoft tasked with pretty much fulfilling that niche and they're showcasing some of their cooler ideas on the adLab site so you can check out some of their thinking.

I can't wait for some of these things to start filtering down to live.com as they help improve not only the suggested results and delivered advertising but might even improve the quality of the organic search results based on observed behaviors.