It's no big surprise, since their paid search program is going to launch in beta later this fall, but news this morning seems to point to the upcoming launch of an MSN powered contextual advertising program to compete with AdWords and the Yahoo! Publishers network. JenSense has a great post today that looks into the story about a MSN contextual ad network.

While the news is expected, the excitement that's likely to buzz around this stories goes to more than just having more choices as a publisher or an advertiser. MSN's adCenter is supposed to have some handy targeting options including things like demographics and ages. That might mean that publishing partners could choose to show ads specifically targeted toward their typical site reader.