Just a quick reminder for those of you using MSN adCenter that on Aug 29th they will be turning on their content network and that means opting you in it. While I’m a bigger fan of MSN content network vs Google’s, I’m still not a fan of using content network, at least not for my clients so I will be making sure to turn this off.

Check out the new Live.com results. You’ll immediately notice your eyes don’t hurt anymore because there is no more bright blue background.

Old Layout

New Layout

I read this little piece on SEW today that was a complete blasting of Microsoft adCenter and in my opinion, completely unnecessary. Sure, MSN has had its ups and downs with the recently launched adCenter but don’t you expect that from nearly every early version of just about any product? I understand that it is slightly different because it is more directly dealing with money, but MSN has been quick to take care of any financial errors the system has encountered. Its growing pains 101. I’m sure that $500 Dyson vacuum you bought your wife 3 years ago had its issues, but did you completely throw it out the window? Why should Microsoft be held to any different standard? For people are who are the early adapters and must have the first generation everything, you’ve come to expect bugs and less then perfect performance. In an ideal world all first versions would be the final version but this is not the case and some things require a bit of patience and understanding.

Ahhh thats an interesting word, “Understanding”. Let’s take a look at Mr. Wright’s complaints and see if I can understand.

First MSN’s explanation:

* Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your advertisements.
* Microsoft may display your advertisements on its network of advertising channels operated by the Microsoft network of participating Web sites and other distribution outlets.

to which Mr. Wright responds:

Ummm. Ok, let?s recap. Now AdCenter will be serving my ads based upon some mysterious criteria that is most likely top secret and designed to increase revenue for Microsoft ? and most likely decrease revenue for my clients. I have no idea when an ad is going to be served in AdCenter?s contextual network, and I have no control over the bids in this contextual network, nor the ability to track the effectiveness of the contextual ads. And I was notified of these changes on the day that the changes took place, leaving me with no time to consult with clients and make budget adjustments accordingly. And if I don?t like it, I should take my ball and go home.

Man, this really sounds shady, the search engine bidding on words for me that I have no control over, completely unfair. This does sound kind of familiar, oh yeah, Google has been doing this for over a year now. Like I always say about basketball refs, if you are gonna call a foul than call the foul, just call it both ways. If you are gonna call out Microsoft, be sure to point your finger at Google as well.

So we all understand what MSN and Google are doing, but what can we do about it other them e-complain on our blogs? Thankfully one of the search engines offers us a way to control this advanced keyword matching. In the reporting center, one of these engines offers you a way to capture the exact query a user typed in. Want to guess which one? If you said MSN you are correct but you don’t win anything. MSN allows a query string parameter that you can insert into your destination URLs in order to pass the query information onto your analytics software. This information can then be used to adjust your bids and campaigns in order to actually SAVE you money. Pretty nifty eh? I can’t wait for Google to offer us this type of information.

Regarding the second part of Mr. Wright’s complaint about MSN putting your ads on their partner sites and not having control over this, everyone does it. Google puts your ads in Gmail, Reader, among the millions of made-for-adsense sites in their content network (re: Google Loves Splogs). Yahoo puts your ads all over the place. And as for MSN, they put it on MSN controlled sites only. Maybe it is just me but that does not seem like an issue to me, at least we know the quality of the content is high quality and not splog worthy.

This post may seem like I am an MSN homer, but I am not. I have no affiliation with them and in fact have ripped them several times on this blog, but I don’t like to see anyone unjustly attacked in a public forum such as the SEW article. I applaud MSN for not taking the easy route that many have suggested and just mimic Google Adwords but have created a very powerful tool that will continue to mature and get better with age.

The adCenter blog announced some new features being launched for adCenter beta. The upgrades are

Easily go to any Campaign or Ad Group in your account via our improved navigation
? Import your other search campaigns, including third-party campaigns, into adCenter with one Excel spreadsheet or comma-separated values (CSV) file.
? Delete poor-performing keywords right on the keyword performance page.
? Download all adCenter data into Excel.
? From any page, find campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads that contain all or part of a search query string.

These are all very important features and much needed upgrades. I thank MSN for finally support bulk uploads and downloads of account information via spreadsheets. For those that are not familiar with this, it is essentially an account dump into a spreadsheet. A very useful feature that Google, for some reason just disabled. This will make it a lot easier for people like myself to make mass changes to account and even import account setups from Google. I’m sure a lot of account managers will appreciate this, I know I sure do.

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Just in case you have missed it Microsoft is giving you $200 when you signup and spend $5 on Microsoft AdCenter.

There is some fine print to be aware of. The $200 credit is only good for 90 days, valid in the US only, and you must sign up by Jan 15 07.

Ever have an account rep or PPC consultant tell you that you aren’t spending enough money? I know it can be one of the most frustrating things to hear especially from a representative from Google, Yahoo, or MSN, because the first thought that will cross your mind is “they just want more of my money.” Although it is hard to believe sometimes, these reps don’t get paid on commission, unless you consider stock prices commission. To help ease the pain these representatives should at least learn not to make this the first solution they offer.

Well, Adcenter has added a feature to help ease the reaction pain from the usual “increase your budget response.” It’s a little talked about feature that was implemented during the last update on the 9th. If you go to your ‘billing reports’ tab in adCenter you will see a feature that tells you exactly what percentage of searches your ads are showing, and what you will need (based on current account factors) to be seen 100% of the time.

Bravo adCenter, Bravo!

Move over WebMasterWorld and DigiPoint forums, MSN has launched a forum dedicated to helping people answer adCenter and MSN focused questions.

While its pretty slow right now, I have a feeling if this forum is kept up with on MSN’s end, it will be a valuable resources to advertisers and campaign managers as they stumble through adCenter’s unique style.

Hello [Advertiser],

We?ve listened to your feedback and I am pleased to let you know about an upcoming Microsoft adCenter upgrade that offers new features to improve your online advertising experience.

Some upgrade highlights:

?Now, use Microsoft adCenter with the Firefox 1.5 browser!
?Daily, weekly and monthly data will be updated every hour to help you view results and optimize campaigns in real-time.
?Select the time frame for which you want your campaign and order summaries to show, instead of viewing them in the life-to-date format.
?User-interface changes to the reporting tab will make usability simpler.
?API upgrades:
oAPI customers will now have access to more procedure calls. Detailed API communications will be sent to API customers.

Your keywords and ads will remain live during the upgrade.

The adCenter upgrade should be complete on August 5th between 8 A.M. and 3 P.M. Pacific Time. During this period, your current keywords and ads will continue to run; however, you won?t be able to access adCenter to make changes.

For those of you who use MSN’s Convertion Tracking you may or may not have notice there was an error occuring because of a system error. adCenter has fixed the problem and things seem to be going smoothly right now.

here is the email from MSN

What caused the conversion tracking error?
The error occurred because of our recent update of the adCenter URL from https://adcenter.msn.com to https://adcenter.microsoft.com. Although we have implemented a URL redirect, we recommend that you ensure that your conversion tracking is enabled properly by doing the following:

1. Sign in to https://adcenter.microsoft.com.
2. On the Campaigns tab, in the Campaign column, click an existing campaign for which you have conversion tracking enabled.
3. On the Select an order page, in the Order name column, click an order.
4. Click the Order Settings tab.
5. If the Enable conversion tracking check box is not already selected, select it.
6. In the conversion tracking code snippet window, click Copy Code.
This will temporarily copy the revised https://adcenter.microsoft.com code snippet to your computer clipboard.
7. Re-paste the code snippet within the HTML of the Web pages you want to track.
You can paste the code snippet anywhere between the HTML body tags. We recommend placing the code toward the bottom right of the page so it does not detract from your page design.
8. Repeat steps 1-7 for any other orders that have conversion tracking enabled.

Will my reporting be affected?
Please note that, because of the error, your conversion tracking numbers are reported as zeros for July 8?14. This report does not mean that you received zero conversions, only that the conversions were not tracked.
We value your business, and we apologize for any inconvenience the error may have caused. If you have any specific questions, please contact adCenter Support.
Sincerely,
Microsoft adCenter Team