Microsoft is full of announcements today, and the most recent one is offering competition to Google Analytics. It’s amazing to think that there is growing competition for free programs. Analytics have traditionally been an expensive proposition, but Google and Microsoft are changing this.

In May of 06 (In fact, I was on the phone with MSN as this was being announced) Microsoft acquired analytics firm Deep Metix.

Today, Microsoft adCenter announced that they were going to offer Deep Metrix analytics to all their advertisers.

The launch date is anticipated to be the second half of 07.

The feature set they expect to launch with will be:

• Page Views
• Referrals
• Conversions
• Paid Search ROI
• Advanced Charts
• Overlays
• And many more

How they integrate paid search ROI will be interesting. Right now, one does not pass a sales variable back to Google Analytics to determine the actual sale of a product. Google Analytics is great when you have a static sales value that can be defined within the console - however, I don’t belivet here’s a way to pass through sale values when each number is different.

The best part about the announcement? It will be free to adCenter advertisers. Yes, yet another free analytics package.

Microsoft adCenter has been launching features and tools at a furious pace since their inception. Let’s hope announcements and tools of this quality continue to come out of Redmond.

• Microsoft’s ‘Gatineau’ Analytics Shows Statistics by Age, Gender, Occupation, and Geographic location
• links for 2008-05-07
• links for 2007-08-28
• Tracking AdSense with Google Analytics
• Google Offers Urchin For Free