I'm in San Francisco today for the ADSPACE digital marketing conference - I'm participating in a panel discussion on the State of Contextual Advertising. Great timing, since I have a lot to talk about. We just launched the Microsoft pubCenter blog today. Although pubCenter is still in beta, the blog is our forum to update you on our progress, track your feedback, and continue to improve what we feel will evolve into a compelling, competitive offering. If you're in SF at the conference, I hope you can attend. My panel starts at 10:15. I'd welcome your questions and perspective!

The beta is going well and some reports on the Web have set high expectations. I want to encourage more users to test our beta, but at the same time, I want to set realistic expectations. Microsoft pubCenter is still a beta and the performance and functionality will sometimes be uneven as you should expect in a beta. By the time we launch, we plan to offer an excellent, compelling alternative in this competitive field.

For now, we are engaging closely with our beta users and working diligently to implement their smart, valuable ideas to create a better product. There is a great opportunity for Web site owners to shape an alternative contextual advertising product to serve their needs. Some of the features users like so far include the ability to control and customize their ads, to monitor performance of their ads, and to engage with other beta users in discussions about the future of this product.

Your voice is important to us.

I hope you'll apply for a beta account today and start contributing your feedback.

Meanwhile follow us here, and subscribe to our  RSS feed. Registered beta users also have access to the private forum for support and discussions during the beta. in addition, we'll share updates on Twitter at twitter.com/pubcenter.

-Kevin