Jensense reports:

“Content Ads is Microsoft’s next product that allows advertisers to place content-targeted, text-based advertisements primarily on Microsoft-owned properties including MSN Money, Real Estate, and many others within the www.msn.com portal.”

So, it’s a first step for Microsoft, distributing their AdCenter listings outside the MSN search engine. It may be sometime before they have an Adsense-like partner program, however.

What Microsoft really needs to do is hurry that aspect along. Yahoo!, for inexplicable reasons, have been so slow on this front (Yahoo Publisher Network is still in beta). The opportunity to compete with Adsense is going begging.

Google, meanwhile, extends their lead…