Microsoft has announced that pubCenter, its advertising solutions platform for app developers, is now live in seven new countries including India, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and Switzerland. Windows Phone 7 developers can monetize their apps by registering with PubCenter. The service integrates Microsoft Advertising Exchange which enables multiple ad networks to bid on the privilege to serve ads into the developers' app. The Microsoft Advertising solution includes an ad control integrated with Windows Phone SDK and allows reporting and automated payouts. Developers start receiving advertising revenues after they have reached a minimum amount required for payout. For India, the amount is Rs 2500. A blog post from Microsoft claims that the ad yield on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Ad SDK for Mobile was 71% higher than Google’s AdMob Windows Phone 7 Ad SDK with higher gross earning and fill rate. The company had conducted the test on Paper Toss and Krashlander and implemented Windows Phone 7 Ad SDK for Mobile and Google’s AdMob Windows Phone 7 Ad SDK on a 50/50 rotation basis. pubCenter's web publishing platform is also currently in a pilot phase and intends to partner publishers who have 200 million monthly page views and 50 million monthly search queries. Apart from Google AdMob, PubCenter competes with third party ad-networks like InMobi, VServ and NetworkPlay.
