MSN AdCenter Now Offers Behavioral Targeting

Microsoft, with slim search marketshare, is hoping to catch up on search by offering more advertising targeting features. They just rolled out behavioral targeting:

MSN TUESDAY BEGAN INCORPORATING BEHAVIORAL targeting features into its paid search program, adCenter. With the new service, advertisers can arrange to have their pay-per-click ads shown to users who MSN has identified as likely purchasers based on their Web-surfing history.

I can see this being beneficial for ads on content websites about noncommercial topics, but I can't imagine this would have much value in the search results. Not for the least of reasons because the seemingly off targeted ads would simultaneously teach searchers to ignore the ads while creeping some of them out.