Marketing Pilgrim

There are a mass of search folks gathering at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus today to learn about the roll out of the new Live Search.

Those attending are under embargo until 9:01pm EST tonight. Unfortunately for me, I’m just too busy to make the event. Fortunately for you, that means I can give you a peak at what to expect.

New Live Search Interface

Microsoft is expect to launch a complete redesign of their search interface. The new look appears to take its cues from Google’s Universal Search and Ask’s 3D search interface.

Thanks to LiveSide, we have a screenshot of how it will look:

Integration of MSN Shopping

Live Search will include more information from MSN Shopping for any searches that appear to be for consumer products. Here’s the drill down for a Canon Powershot camera.

New Video Search

You can also expect MSFT to revamp their video search offering with new features like instant start when you scroll your mouse over the thumbnail–just like Ask. The updates to their video search tool come as the company reveals bold plans to ramp up its video advertising products. According to the NYT…

Microsoft today will announce a more modest advance: changes to the MSN Video site that are supposed to make the ads there less intrusive and more ubiquitous…MSN Video will play fewer video ads in a session, but increase the reach of the ads by showing them once every three minutes. Until now, video ads have appeared at the start of every two clips, even if those clips were only 10 seconds long. The change is also meant to make sharing videos easier, which MSN hopes will encourage more online video watching.

We’ll have more details once the embargo lifts.

UPDATE: The new MSN Video site is live.

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