WebProNews - AdCenter

3 Reasons Why Your AdCenter Campaign Could Be Paused

Chris Crum — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:07:26 +0000

Microsoft shared some info, aiming to "demystify" downtime in adCenter campaigns. adCenter advertisers may sometimes find that their campaigns are paused, when they check their accounts. Microsoft names three reasons you might see this.

The first possibility is that you've reached your daily budget limit. When a user sets their monthly budget, they can also set a daily budget limit. If a campaign spends this amount before the end of any given day, it could result in the "Budget Paused" message, and ad won't be served again until the next day.

Another possibility is that the campaign budget is divided up across the month. "With a $3,000 monthly budget, adCenter would allocate roughly $100 per day to a campaign running in a 30-day month," explains >Microsoft's Tina Kelleher. "When that $100 has been spent on any given day, the campaign status changes to Budget Paused until the next day."

The other possibility is that the account has been set up to spend the budget until it's depleted. This means that depending on the popularity of your keywords and the bids you have set for them, this could take any amount of time. Once that money is spent, the budget is paused.

So, the moral of the story is: know how your budget is set up, and monitor it. You can change it if need be, but if you don't keep an eye on it, you may be wasting time with a paused campaign that you'd rather be spending actually having your ads shown.

Microsoft Answers Common adCenter API Questions

Chris Crum — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:32:13 +0000

Microsoft says it has had a lot of questions lately about access to adCenter API tokens, and the company has addressed these issues on the adCenter API blog. The API program is still in the "pilot" phase, so API tokens are not available to everybody.

"Each request is reviewed for certain criteria," explains Microsoft's Chris Norred. "Users who have a track record of monthly expenditures with adCenter are provided access to the pilot. Other criteria are also considered."

"We receive several requests from new businesses or developers who build tools or services using the adCenter API and have goals to deliver more spend," Norred continues. "Currently, however, support for the adCenter API in the pilot phase cannot serve all these potential customers."

The API lets users create apps that can:

- Create and manage adCenter campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads.

- Obtain the status on ad groups, keywords, and ads.

- Pause and resume ad groups.

- Generate keyword estimates.

- Generate reports about campaign performance.

- Perform ad group targeting.

Microsoft is planning to extend adCenter API access, as well as access to more APIs related to Microsoft advertising services. Currently access to the API is limited to the highest-spending customers, and tokens aren't available for purchase or through other channels, but in the future, access will be opened up for users who meet "a minimum criteria."

Microsoft does not charge for tokens, and the terms of use prohibit their reselling. The company says it will keep interested parties updates via the blog.

Bing Search Summit Reveals More About Bing

Chris Crum — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:51:01 +0000

You could learn a lot from a #badabing hashtag. If you search that on Twitter, you'll find all kinds of tweets from those in attendance at Microsoft's Bing Search Summit.

It is interesting to see some of the things people are talking about with regards to Bing, and as the search engine is still in its infancy, everybody wants to know all they can. If you dont' feel like wading through tons and tons of tweets, relax. I've done it for you (although I'm sure there will be plenty more since the time of this writing).

Here are some highlights (or "hightweets" if you will):

@andybeal: Satya taking some audience heat because Bing cashback shows lower prices than actually on the site

@davesnyder apparently Bing.com takes scraper sites (also known as search engines) to a whole new level of scrapiness

@lizlawley but @bing, the keynote speaker specifically placed "community" in a different category from "search". indicative of mindset.

@vanessafox If you want to opt-out from Bing hover preview on SERP, can use a nopreview meta tag. But hover may increase qualified clicks

@andybeal: When a Bing user hover-previews your search result, send that data to our web analytics (cool idea!)

@jenstar: Find and replace options for multiple campaigns on ad copy, parameters, etc is pretty cool in the adcenter desktop

@Mel66: adCenter Desktop has targeting settings in it (incremental bids, etc. )- better than AW Editor (on this, anyway)

@andybeal: Average "information" search session consists of 6 different queries

@hharteveldt: #TripIt may hv a potential competitor. Bing offers ability to save searches, create virtual file folders, share on social netwks

@adventuregirl: Learning about Save & Share featur 4 Bing- Ucan publsh TRAVEL info U find as set of links 4 Facebook- GREAT feature.

@GregBoser: <meta name="robots" content="nopreview"> to opt out of bing hover.

@lizlawley: finding that http://bingle.pwnij.com/ is *very* useful for comparing relevance/quality of results.

@michaelbonfils: Bing does not show up for "search engine" on Bing.com. They should at least buy an ad.

@localseoguide: need Silverlight to do interesting things with Bing's Save&Share feature

@Oilman: seeing 2 wikipedia results for nearly everything I search for on bing

@andybeal: We just had a really quick look at what goes into Bing's algorithm--I think @oilman shed a tear ;-)

@andybeal: Satya promised Bing would not be tied to a platform, but it uses Silverlight for the cool features--which is not avail for linux

@michaelbonfils: Bing shows up number 1 for "decision engine" but not "search engine".

@denschaal: bing to launch new features monthly

@Mel66 Site exclusion now available in adCenter - can exclude at ad group and campaign level (up to 500 sites) #badabing

Greg Sterling has a look at the Satya Nadella keynote. You can see some interesting images here.

Bing Algorithm and Advertising Questions Answered

Chris Crum — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:02:52 +0000

Microsoft has posted a FAQ page for adCenter advertisers wondering just what Bing has in store for them. One question pertained to Bing's algorithm, to which Microsoft's Carolyn Miller responded:

"We have made numerous improvements to our algorithm, focusing on spelling, freshness of results, and core ranking. Our algorithm is changing continuously to provide the best results. Although we have a six month release cycle for major updates, our algorithm is refined everyday to improve the relevance of our results and to better address our users’ intent."

The answers to most of the other questions about how advertising will change, can be summed up in one sentence:

It's the same as before.

A variation on the above statement is pretty much the answer to the majority of the questions in this list of FAQs. No new ad units are available on Bing SERPs at this point. Advertisers will use adCenter just the same to buy keywords.

Microsoft does appear to view Bing as more beneficial to its adCenter advertisers than Live Search was, simply because of Bing's focus on decision-making - specifically, decisions related to shopping, health, and travel. also seen

Miller also offers the possibility that Bing will be more popular than Live Search, and therefore help advertisers.

"It is difficult to predict additional volume, but, we expect that the Bing outreach campaign will help raise awareness of the problems with search overload today," she says. "We think once users try Bing, they will enjoy the experience and hopefully keep coming back, especially when they have decision to make in our key focus areas of shopping, travel, health and local. We certainly hope that leads to an increase in share over time."

This may or may not be wishful thinking. Time will tell. Either way, advertisers should be getting a nice little push as Bing is in the spotlight.

You are probably aware by now that Live.com is redirecting to Bing. What you may or may not know is that in 45 days, live.com will begin serving as the destination for other "Live" services like Office Live and Windows Live.

Are you an adCenter advertiser? What do you expect from Bing? Talk about it.

Micrsoft on Why UK Advertisers Should Use adCenter

Chris Crum — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:05:38 +0000

Microsoft faces some pretty tough competition in the pay-per-click space. On the adCenter blog today, they have posted some reasons they think users (at least in the UK) would benefit more from adCenter than its "main competitor."

There are a number of reasons Microsoft gives to use the service that frankly don't really stand out from its competitors, but they do provide some numbers that may stand out to advertisers:

- Our searchers are 51% more likely to convert than the average UK searcher and 61% more likely than that of our main competitor (via NNR UK, Oct-Dec '08)

- Searchers are 32% more engaged on destination sites than the average UK searcher spending 4.37 minutes on average on destination sites (via NNR UK, Oct-Dec '08)

- The MSN Portal has the largest audience in the UK along with millions of engaged users using our Hotmail and Messenger services. More likely to be action-driven searching than mere browsing (via **comScore August 2008)

Other reasons given include display/search integration and targeting tools, which aren't really unique to adCenter. They do note however, that UK Microsoft Advertising was voted number 1 by IPA 2008 for outstanding customer service and support.

When calling for creativity and variety in PPC activities/engines, Microsoft's Mairead McCarthy says"...if you were advertising on the TV you wouldn’t concentrate your entire budget on one channel." Ironically, Microsoft's biggest competitor offers TV ads within its platform (granted not in the UK yet), a service adCenter is still lacking.

New Ways To Track Microsoft adCenter Conversions

Chris Crum — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:58:00 +0000

Different people have different ways of counting conversions, and options with which to do so can prove helpful for catering to the advertiser's personal preferences. Microsoft has released a new package of conversion counting controls for adCenter.

The controls allow you to specify how you want to count your conversions. adCenter now offers the following three conversion counting options:

1. Count One Conversion Per Click

2. Count One Conversion Per Unique URL

3. Count All

"Option 1 is the easiest method, as it does not require you to make any major changes apart from the conversion script," says Brendan at the adCenter Blog. "It does, however, mean that you won’t see repeated conversions, and so if this is desirable you should consider option 2 and note the additional set-up required."

To implement your preferred counting option, you need to adjust the javascript. Brendan walks you through how to do this here. For additional details on the hows and whys of changing your counting preferences, Microsoft also offers this informative tracking guide (pdf).

Microsoft Closing Shop on adCenter Analytics

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:37:19 +0000

Microsoft's adCenter Analytics has not yet left beta, and it appears that it will not ever do so. The company announced today that the program will be shut down at the end of the year.

Technically, it's already been closed, but current users will still be able to access it through December 31st. Email support will last until this date as well. Mel Carson at the adCenter Blog offers the following message to users:

Our team would like to sincerely thank you for your participation and your invaluable contributions to the program. Our objectives at the outset were to serve the needs of small and midsize self-service customers, as well as evolve the Microsoft strategy to address the Web analytics space.

The insights you’ve contributed through your feedback and your use of the tool have served an invaluable purpose in shaping Microsoft’s future in this space. You’ve helped us work towards making an informed decision about building a general Web analytics solution, and despite the end of life plan, the beta was very much a success.

Microsoft is good enough to point users to alternative web analytics solutions including even Google and Yahoo in the list. They do, however note that they don't endorse any of the listed alternatives.

Users are directed to save their historical data by using the export to download your reports feature in adCenter Analytics. Again, they have until the end of the year to do so.

5 Microsoft adCenter Performance Tips

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:34:27 +0000

Advertisers who use Microsoft adCenter were treated today to some tips on getting ads up faster and improving their performance. Obviously these are essential factors to the success of a campaign. They're mostly common sense, but the mere fact that they have to be mentioned means they're getting overlooked frequently.

"By adhering to our Editorial Guidelines, you can sail through our various editorial and quality checks and avoid delays in getting your ads live. To help you prevent editorial disapprovals, we have compiled a list of five helpful tips—best practices that can make your editorial reviews a snap," says Microsoft's Tina Kelleher.

1. Make sure the grammar and spelling are correct

2. Check Ad Copy Length

- Ad Title - 25 characters
- Ad Description - 70 characters
- Display URL - 35 characters

Microsoft's Kim Farmer suggests checking the length with excel:

3. Make sure your site is working properly and provides a good user experience

4. Correctly enter you display URL

5. Make sure your site has a privacy policy.

These rules are all generally good to follow anyway, but knowing that they can actually get your ads up quicker and and improve their performance, should be extra incentive for doing so. Kelleher of course goes into more detail about each tip.

With ad budgets around the web tightening, advertisers are going to really want to get the most bang out of their buck. If this path leads them to adCenter, these points are not ones that should be overlooked.

Microsoft Enhances adCenter, Offers Tips

Chris Crum — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:22:24 +0000

The Microsoft adCenter team took the holiday break to put some "finishing touches" on some enhancements to the service. These enhancements include:

- Custom Date Ranges, and
- Custom filters

The custom date ranges allow you to customize your campaign performance grids for easy viewing of performance data for campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords for custom time periods that you specify, without having to run reports.

"Date ranges for up to 31 consecutive days within the last two years can be utilized, or you can use the existing adCenter preset date ranges if they work for you," explains Mel at the adCenter blog.

Custom filters allow you to find important info by applying column filters to campaign performance grids. This lets you ignore under-performing keywords and concentrate on ones that do better. "You can use this functionality to display keywords with high spend but low click-through rate so you can spend time optimizing them, and pretty much manipulate the data to your own ends," says Mel. "In addition to applying filters to the data values, you can also set as many as three custom filters on certain columns."

On another Microsoft adCenter-related note, Kris Clegg shared some tips for content ad campaigns in another post, which include:

1. Separate content campaigns from search campaigns
2. Find the right keywords
3. Make your starting bids competitive
4. Keep ad copy fresh and enticing, and
5. Do not "set it and forget it".

Of course, Clegg elaborates heavily on each of these tips. The post is worth checking out for those of you running these campaigns with adCenter.

Microsoft Helps adCenter Customers Get Help

Chris Crum — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:00:41 +0000

Getting support for any product is often a painstaking and time consuming ordeal. There are parts of Microsoft that I have personally had such trouble with.

Evidently, contacting the support staff for Microsoft's adCenter has been a common problem among users. Tina Kellenher at the Microsoft AdCenter Blog says that it's one of the most frequently asked questions they get. So, she thought it would be a good idea to provide a round-up of all the ways users can obtain assistance from the support team.

First off, starting at the Microsoft AdCenter Blog, you can find a support button in the bottom right hand corner:

Kellenher provides links to email addresses for the following markets that can be used to request support:

She also suggests using the adCenter discussion forum, which is frequented not only by other advertisers, but by Microsoft staff, both of which can potentially help answer your questions.

Finally at the adCenter site itself, there is a link in the footer that says "Contact Support", and one in the top right corner that says "Help," which will also get you to the "contact support" link.

Based on Tina's advice, it sounds like it should not be too hard to get some adCenter help. The real test is how helpful the support staff actually is when users come to them with problems. Hopefully Microsoft has a good handle on this, because Google has a pretty user-friendly help center, not to mention a fair bit of search market share.

Microsoft Discusses Updating adCenter Bids

Doug Caverly — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:06:53 +0000

The economy's crashing, the holidays are coming, and businesses are growing ultra-competitive. It's time to revisit online marketing campaigns, then, and Microsoft has released some tips on how adCenter users can decide if their bids need to be updated.

Yes, yes, we know at least of few of you are probably asking "adCenter?" in incredulous voices. But revisit the first sentence of this article if you need reminders of some people's motives. Also (call this exhibit D) a moderator on the Search Engine Watch forums composed a post earlier today titled, "Adcenter Beating Google in Targeting."

adCenter Bid Evaluation

So on to the process. Tina Kelleher writes on the adCenter Blog for Advertisers, "After you sign in to adCenter, click on the 'Reports' tab. The default setting is for a Keyword Performance report set to a summary view. Feel free to modify the View and Date Range values to suit your needs." Then look for a "Download CSV" link and export your info into Excel.

Select the term "Avg. Position," press the keys Ctrl+Shift+L, click the arrow button that will appear, and finally choose the "Sort Largest to Smallest" option.

Kelleher concludes, "If after completing this step there are items in the top half of the sheet showing in a position lower than you would like them to be, these are the terms that could use a bid boost." Happy bid adjusting to one and all.

Utilizing Match Types Can Save Your SEM Dollars

Chris Crum — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:11:13 +0000

Google's been offering some great AdWords tips lately. Specifically, they recently discussed the advantages of using the broad match option and the negative keyword option. Mike McDonald also spoke with Ken Jurina of Epiar about the negative keyword option in the following interview at PubCon.

While there is a ton of great info related to the different AdWords keyword options, Microsoft AdCenter offers some options of their own, that aren't really discussed as often as those of AdWords. A post today from Tina Kelleher at the Microsoft AdCenter blog talks about some ways to reduce your CPC (cost-per-click) with some of their own options. A couple of ways to do so include:

- Bidding across Match Types, and
- Using negative keywords to qualify traffic

When it comes to bidding across Match Types, Kelleher says:

If you’re unsure of what the differences are between Exact, Phrase and Broad match types, I would recommend reading through Lauren Taft-McPhee’s post on the topic before continuing on as I am going to assume these concepts are familiar to you.

Bidding aggressively on Exact match only is a great strategy for keeping your traffic highly targeted and relevant. If, however, you're finding that your impressions aren't as high as you'd like them to be, you should expand your bidding to Phrase match, Broad match, or both. Doing so can help lower your overall average CPC as competitive pricing can sometimes be lower on different match types.

As far as negative keywords, it is basically the same concept as that talked about by Google here. Kelleher gives an example about a travel agency. A travel agency might bid on "holiday travel", but use negative keywords to eliminate searches for "Billie Holiday" or lyrics to the Madonna song "Holiday."

The lesson here is that when using search engine advertising, you've got options available to you that you would do well to utilize. This is especially true as marketing budgets tighten as a result of the economy, and marketers are looking to reallocate their budgets to make sure their dollars are being spent in the wisest possible strategies. Utilizing the right match options whether you're using AdWords or AdCenter (or both) can help you reduce that amount of dollars that are being spent. Microsoft has another good article on Match Types here.

Microsoft Introduces adCenter Learning Center

Doug Caverly — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:45:22 +0000

Instructions can sometimes be a little overwhelming; what comes with a new cell phone will keep you occupied for about as long as Stephen King's "The Stand." It never hurts to have some help available, though, and so Microsoft has introduced the adCenter Learning Center.

The Learning Center is supposed to help people with every possible level of advertising experience. Podcasts, videos, and interactive tools - in addition to standard Q&A blocks of text - are all available or on the way. Users should also get to influence what else is introduced.

"Bottom line: I want to make it easy for you to advertise with Microsoft," wrote Kelley Myers on the adCenter Blog. "I'm ready for your feedback, comments, and suggestions. . . . Maybe you're a sophisticated user who isn't interested in the mechanics, but you'd like to learn more about the strategy of search. Maybe you're a small business owner who is doing it all on your own - site design, search advertising, lead generation, and marketing - and you'd like to see who else is successful and how they're doing it. What information is important? What would you like to see?"

If complexity is the one thing that's been keeping advertisers away from Microsoft, consider the Learning Center a magic bullet. If not, well, this is at least a polite nod to current users.

A hat tip goes to Nathania Johnson, and a few questioning looks may be headed towards the writers behind cell phone manuals.

Microsoft Opens Door To AdCenter Community

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:34:31 +0000

A new community site to support Microsoft's adCenter clients opened during the St. Patrick's Day festivities.

If Microsoft wants to make gains against Google in online advertising, the company need to do a better job of putting useful information out there for its clients. Compared with the routine postings Google does with blogs about AdWords and Webmaster Central, Microsoft has been lacking in this department.

However, Microsoft made a move to at least organize its advertiser resources better. The debut of the adCenter Community, an official support site, made Microsoft's resources a little more orderly.

As Search Engine Land noted, out with the old blogs and forums as they were, in with the new site and its updated look and navigation.

Microsoft organized its blogs by Advertiser, API, and Analytics tabs on adCenter Community. Visitors have the option of hitting the forums or checking out whatever multimedia Microsoft has available.

With the reorganized destination in place, we want to see Microsoft keep the content coming to its clients and interested visitors. Competition produces a lively online ad marketplace, and advertisers will benefit as Microsoft vies for Google's visitors with an informative presence.

AdCenter Customers Becoming Disgruntled

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:02:47 +0000

It seems that many Microsoft adCenter members are disgruntled with the company policies.

The advertisers are being told to increase their bid prices, which of course is not well taken by the clients. Due to this some have even dropped adCenter in favor of AdWords.

However, it seems that the same thing is being done by Google as well. As even Google's AdWords representatives tell the advertisers to raise their minimum bid prices, so that they can have better traffic. And most often, they give in because they do get an increased amount of traffic.

The subscribers are ready to shell out money for Google AdWords for Google indeed has high traffic. Though for Microsoft adCenter they can't say that they will get as good traffic, so instead they just drop adcenter.

The discussion continues on WebmasterWorld.

Comments

Microsoft Teams Up With EDGAR Online on Content Network

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:56:42 +0000

Launched last year, Microsoft's adCenter Content Network only had Microsoft web properties during the initial stage.

But now to make a mark in the field and to expand its network, Microsoft is all set to work with high-quality publishers like financial data provider EDGAR Online. This will be the first non-Microsoft web property to carry adCenter ads.

In the official press release, Microsoft Corporation and EDGAR Online Incorporation has announced a strategic alliance in which the two companies will work together to bring advertising to the EDGAR Online audience and content to the MSN portal.

Brian McAndrews, senior vice president, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft said, “EDGAR Online attracts a highly targeted audience with its deep business and financial content, and coupling that audience with Microsoft's advertising technologies is going to be a winning combination for advertisers. The inclusion of EDGAR Online as a syndicated advertising partner site and the addition of its content to MSN Money will add value for our users and will help advertisers reach an even broader audience in this highly attractive financial vertical."

On the other hand, Sue Bratone Childs, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, EDGAR Online said, “Microsoft's advertising technologies are best in class, and we believe this deal will further enhance the experience of our users by ensuring the advertising they see on our site is relevant to their interests. Furthermore, the addition of our financial content to MSN Money is a strategic expansion of our brand and reach, and a win for consumers and advertisers alike."

This step has been taken by Microsoft to ensure a high quality content network to publishers, so that in the long run advertisers will be in the position to achieve better ROI as compared to what they get currently on Google and Yahoo's Content networks.

Comments

adExcellence Accreditation from Microsoft Announced in UK

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:29:12 +0000

The moderator at WebmasterWorld, Receptional has said in a WebmasterWorld thread that he got an invitation from Microsoft, asking him for participate in the adExcellence accreditation program in the United Kingdom.

The program was launched as beta in the US just last month, see: Microsoft Launches adExcellence, the adCenter accreditation

The moderator, Receptor says “ I got an invitation to join "adexcellence" which is the new parallel to Google's university / adwords professional exam.”

If you would like to sign up for the UK program you can register here.

The discussion continues at Webmaster World.

Comments

Microsoft's Sweet New Ad Intelligence Tool

Aaron Wall — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:40:43 +0000

I hate to curse, but this tool is bad ass. Ad Intelligence is a new keyword tool from Microsoft which is well worth using, and will probably force Google and Yahoo to make better keyword tools.

All of this data is free during the beta test as long as you have a Microsoft AdCenter account (you can set one up for $5, with a $50 coupon if you search Google for AdCenter) and a copy of Microsoft Excel 2007 (the Ad Intelligence link above allows you to download a free trial of Excel).

Example Keyword Data

Some samples of the kinds of data you can get from Microsoft Ad Intelligence:

keyword data

related keywords

spiky keywords

URL related keywords

Background Data Information Reviewed

Here are some of the sweet features of Microsoft Ad Intelligence:

Keyword wizard: Allows you to extract keywords based on a list of keyword in excel, a given vertical, or a given URL. Then it allows you to generate an expanded keyword list based on category similarity, keyword bidding association, or keywords containing the core keyword. Then it allows you to export an output of estimated search volume, clicks, ad position, ad CTR, and click cost for a given date range and match type.

keyword extraction: Extract keywords based on an input URL. Can set maximum keywords from 1 to 100, and can set a minimum confidence level of relevancy.

keyword suggestion: suggest keywords based on aggregate advertiser behavior, keywords containing the core keyword, or keywords that are deemed to be similar based on category similarity

search buzz: Top category keywords based on 22 core categories and about a couple hundred subcategories. The spiky tool uses the same categories but is focused on spiky keywords, and includes spiky index, spike start date, and spike end date. You can also set it to "all verticals" to discover leading overall spiky keywords or leading common search queries.

monthly traffic: Monthly search volumes for keywords, and forecasts for the next 3 months. Also offers a daily search volume option.

keyword categorization: Identifies categories that a keyword belongs to.

geographic: Shows the geographic breakdown of a search query.

demographic: Shows date range and male vs female breakdown stats of keywords.

monetization: Allows you to view ad impressions, ad clicks, CTR, and CPC by category.

advanced algorithms: Allows you to change date ranges and other variables for the above tools.

Try it Today

You have to have Microsoft Office 2007 with Excel and an AdCenter account to use this tool. But it is well worth the effort to sign up for free. Some early reviews are available on WMW, and you can download the package here.

Comments

Microsoft Excel AdCenter Add-in & Webinar

Navneet Kaushal — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:33:10 +0000

Microsoft has announced the launch of the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007. You might want to download the Add-in from here.

There will even be an Add-in Webinar on January 23, 2008 where you can learn more about this tool. You can register for the Webinar at With this Add-in, Microsoft has integrated many of its advanced keyword technologies and valuable data into Excel. The tool would allow users to conduct keyword research inside Excel 2007 itself.

The Product features include:

Keyword Expansion – we have included 3 different expansion algorithms: campaign association, fast contained, and category simulation

Keyword Search Volume Historical and Forecast – we have included daily and monthly keyword traffic data, including forecasting

Keyword Buzz – you can find buzz keywords in our 300+ verticals

Keyword Demographic analysis

Keyword Geographic analysis

Keyword Categorization

Keyword Monetization – you can find all monetization information (CPC, CTR, etc.) for your keyword list

The Add-in is based on the Microsoft Keyword Services Platform (KSP) and Microsoft plans to utilize this tool to enable third party developers to build applications with Microsoft keyword technologies.

Despite all the hype about the launch Dan Zarrella has reviewed and questioned the Add-in's functionality on six counts viz "The geographic data report seems to duplicate keywords for some reason," it's a bit slow to retrieve data from KSP server, etc.

Via: The adCenter Blog

Comments

SIM - Microsoft adCenter Add-in

Jordan McCollum — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:32:39 +0000

The goods: Microsoft adCenter has a new product rolling out next month. A plugin (”Add-in”) for Excel will give marketers access to automatic tools to generate keywords, expand keyword lists, get actual traffic and demographic data—as in real numbers. If you haven’t seen a demo yet, let me tell you: this looks very cool. Here are my notes from Microsoft’s presentation and demo at the Search Insider Summit today.

Session description: Expanding and optimizing keyword lists doesn’t need to be complex or time consuming. This session will provide a preview adCenter’s latest innovation – the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 and how it can be used to rapidly and easily build out or expand keyword lists and plan keyword strategy.

Presenters:

Stacey Harris, Agency Marketing Manager, Microsoft
Natala Menezes, Product Manager adCenter
Zhaohui Tang, Senior Group Program Manager

Natala Menezes
The goals and direction for adCenter:

Quality
Transparency—real, actionable, accurate data
Simplicity

When we talk about transparency, we want to give you access to real data—not just graphs and relative measures. We want them to be actionable and performable for you. We’re big on demographic and geographic info.

Simplicity—easy-to-use tools in the environment you’re working in already.
New product launching next month inside an application that you’re already familiar with, Excel: the Keyword Service Platform (KSP).

What is it? A treasure trove of keyword info. It has algorithms to extrapolate new terms from a set, define categorical relationships, access to real data. It’s a development platform.
(Want access to SDK? adcafb@microsoft.com)

“Better Together” [because everything at Microsoft needs a name.]

Search marketers already work in Excel.
Keyword research shouldn’t involve so much cut & paste.
Excel 2007 advances: unlimited rows; advanced add-in platform
You don’t need to be an expert in Excel to use these tools
Data is tuned for adCenter but can be applied to any campaign on any engine

The right keyword for the right audience to capture the right customer
3 philosophies: keyword research (easily generate and expand your list), keyword forecasting (historical monthly data and future predictions), keyword monetization (understand KPIs to help you decide which keyword to use & how much to bid)—CPC and CTR

Zhaohui Tang

Keyword technologies & related tools

Keyword research is the most important aspect of any search optimization, promotion campaign and web analytics.

expansion—relationships

monetization

commercial intention: map vs. digital camera. We’ve had 2 researchers working for 2 years on this.

Seasonality

synonymy

categorization

translation—automatic
demographics, geographic

KSP is a server platform that provides a set of smart keyword-related web services to empower adCenter, windows Live and 3rd party developers building next gen of online ad apps and beyond.

Demo and XBOX give away

XL plugin—ad intelligence. Lovely icons: keyword wizard, keyword extraction, keyword suggestion (options), search buzz, monthly and daily traffic, keyword categorization, geographic, demographic, monetization and vertical kpis, advanced algorithm.

Daily data updates, researchers in adCenter labs building new models—all at your fingertips

type in URL (autos.msn.com)—generates keywords (as many as you want). Gives you top two most likely categories (segments): vehicles/automobiles. Financial services/insurance/vehicle insurance
select keyword, use expansion. Finds all the keywords containing those keywords.

Easy to delete keywords

100s of keyword in seconds—confidence for relevance (r2)

Monthly traffic and forecasts—real numbers!

Daily traffic and forecasts (great for dayparting)—as recently as 2 days ago.

(Conservative approach—take out fraud/bots)

Geographic info—where are people searching from. City, state, country

Demographic info: percentages male/female, age distribution (over a set date range) (some uncertainty, of course—margin of error)

Vertical KPIs—compare insurance vertical v. used car vertical—clicks, impressions, average position (I guess your ads’), CTR, CPC

Monetization—show CTR, CPCs, etc.

Algorithm settings: generates a chart with different positions over time—and can graph impressions, CTR, CPC, etc.

Conclusion: Keyword Wizard is fabulous
available in early January
acpc@microsoft.com to get access to tool

Other features to play with:

search buzz—reveals keyword trends, “spiky” occurrences. Great for capturing popularity data, top frequent keyword over a longer time period

Questions

Is there going to be back end compatibility for non2007 XL?

We’re debating whether to provide 2003 version or do web-based. It would be pretty significant to do 2003. (Zhaohui says they’re working on it, but have no dates)

If I’m not an XL user, can I use KSP? Do you buy/subscribe for access?

We’re working on this as FREE tools (except for Excel).

All the features we saw—are those available for all keyword? Or are there thresholds?

Zhaohui: There are certain things (privacy issues). We only do keywords with at least 5 customers bidding on it. There’s a quota system to avoid abuse (but it’s fairly generous). For larger deals, you can get partnership.

To clarify: is there search volume info threshold?

If there are at least 10 queries a month, we’ll show then numbers.

It’s a % based system on Passport data. Some confidentiality on geographic and demographic info. It’s a confidence score to use as a predictive measure.

Can you explain how the confidence measure is performed/conducted?

Zhaohui: Each algorithm owner decides how to interpret the confidence score—depends on the researcher that wrote it.

Natala: More likely to vary in predicting CPC. You can use this for establishing a testing pattern.

They’re working on lag times in budget/updating.

The search volume data is just from Live. Right, so if you wanted to extrapolate that, you should use market share data. . . .

Natala: We often say the data is best tuned to adCenter, but you can use it anywhere.

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Microsoft adCenter Ready To School Advertisers

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:10:40 +0000

The adExcellence program being offered by Microsoft will help its advertising clients learn all about adCenter. Microsoft's adCenter blog announced adExcellence, an education program for the users of its advertising service. AdCenter represents Microsoft's effort chase down Google in the online search advertising market.

Through the training program, participants can hone their adCenter knowledge for improving their campaigns. Those who wish to do so may take the adExcellence accreditation exam; US residents who have had an adCenter account for 30 days or longer are eligible to take the exam, which costs $50.

Materials in the adExcellence training program appear as Flash content. They cover six categories:

Introduction to Microsoft adCenter
Getting Started
Targeting
Tracking Ad Performance
Optimizing Ad Performance
adCenter Budgeting and Billing

Currently the course materials only appear in US English, but Microsoft plans to keep updating adExcellence with new materials and support for more regions of the world.

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Keywords Still the Foundations of SEM Campaigns

Navneet Kaushal — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:33:09 +0000

Keywords are still the foundation that build all search marketing campaigns. This session will look at researching and developing a killer keyword list for a site or special project. It will also look at tools available to automate the task of finding keywords and phrases.

Moderator:

Christine Churchill

Speakers:

Ken Jurina, President, Epiar Inc

Larry Mersman, Vice President, Trellian

Wil Reynolds, Founder, SEER Interactive

Stoney deGeyter, Pole Position Marketing

Natala Menezes, Product Manager, Microsoft adCenter, Microsoft

Moderator Christine Churchill, kicks off the discussion stating the importance of keyword research and how if this is done well, the rest of SEO will go well.

First speaker of the day is Ken Jurina, President, Epiar Inc. Ken says he's certain he's at the right place as the carpet has mouse patterns. Heh heh.

What exactly is keyword research and how should it be done?

Used to data-mine possible keyword search behavior around the hundreds of phrases from manifold sources.

Get rid of skewed results such as inconsistencies, non-seasonal irregularities, and clear-cut data errors.

Pinpoint core relevance or non-relevance of potential phrases based on demographics, geography and other ad-targeting parameters.

Uses of Advanced Keyword Research

Business Research: Use it to research products, competitive intelligence.

Social Research: Political issues, publish topics, celebrity branding.

Brand Equity: Select relevant words for your core. If you 'sell t.v. sets, find out which models are popular.

What are people looking for?

New Product Ideas: Find out what are people want? This opens many new opportunities.

Consumer Feedback: Find out what users are saying, problems they face,, parts they are seeking for, service problems & issues.

Celebrity Brand: Find PR issues.

Ken shows a case study of a music store.

Situation:

The client has a store selling brick and mortar music equipments. Online presence is almost nil.

After some keyword research, they learned people wanted new product lines, there was a gap for a new vertical, demands changed seasonally, including searches for discontinued products.

Result:

Sales reach $90,000 from virtually nothing. Big rankings on over 85 percent of key phrases.

Conducting Advanced Keyword Research:

Use multiple sources – WordTracker and Trellian. Find out keyword difficulty based on search in Google which will tell you how big the competition is. Ken pinpoints keyword research tools offered by SEOmoz, We Build Pages and Trellian.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Google Trends: Shows useful comparative data on keyword phrases. Results break it down depending on geography, date range, language while also finding news stories based on trend. Google Trends give you the option of seeing search results chronologically. Find peaks and valleys.

Microsoft adCenter: Good for keyword forecast, demographic prediction etc .

The panel's second speaker is Larry Mersman, Vice President, Trellian who is herre with a case study for NeedMoreBeer.com.

Larry says that keyword research is all about identifying keywords and phrases that your customers use to find your site, business, its products or services.

NeedMoreBeer.com.

This site was optimized for 'finest beer in Germany online.' after some research, they found that the search phrase (German beer) had a big number of searches performed. What they did next was, update their content. This resulted in a 200% hike in sales.

Keyword Discovery Phrase: Create your keywords list, including misspellings, typos etc.

Evaluation Phrase: Organize your your keyword list in such a way that more significant terms and phrases get more attention.

Implementation: Use the terms on your site.

Optimization and Performance Tuning: Tweak your content accordingly.

Create lists based on brainstorming, finding out what your competitors are using, go through what your customers say, use log files and also from keyword generators.

Keyword research should be used to find relevant search phrases and words, recognize potential spellings and misspellings, find out the search phrases and terms your competitors find significant etc. Always keep track of what your competitors are using.

Wil Reynolds, Founder, SEER Interactive, is up for an interactive discussion. He starts by asking the audience to write down a few keywords for the images he has running on the projector. After which, he asks everyone to read out their keywords. Moral of the story: Everyone uses different keywords and search phrases.

The best way to stay in business is to buy your own product. To this effect, he uses a Mercedes. Apparently, the German car company do not like to call their pre-owned cars as used. However, this is the term that search engine users type. To overcome this dilemma, Wil had to do some keyword research.

Selecting wrong keywords is detrimental to your career. Further, Wil mentions a few companies who were replaced when their keywords didn't evolve. Some of the comparisons he made were of:

Tabloid vs Perez Hilton

Home Depot vs Tim the builder

Business 2.0 vs TechCrunch

AAA vs Mapquest vs Google Maps

Wil's Favourite tools for keyword selection and research

MSN adLabs' Search Funnel: This site tells you what users look for or go to after they type in your keyword. Wil thinks it's the best tool to find intent though it still lacks data. Nevertheless, it's best for broader and bigger terms rather than small and niched items.

AdLabs: Focus on broader search, keep a check on updates, drill down.

Yahoo! Suggest: Wil finds this better than Google's. How it differs from Google is that, Yahoo! Suggest doesn't bring up suggestions based on the first four letters like how Google does.

Up next is Stoney deGeyter, from Pole Position Marketing who will throw some light on gathering, sorting and organizing keywords for an SEO campaign. These he divides into three phases.

Phase 1. Gathering Keywords.

Find out what your campaign's core terms are. Core terms are unique, 2-3 search phrases that appropriately present the focus of any webpage on your site. While findign out your core terms research, you have to take time and think of ideas. Think about your site, find its meta tags, log files, content, link structure to reach core terms. Stoney recommends using keyword research tools.

Sort out the search phrases/core terms on the basis of which are significant to you. Ask yourself which terms will help your target audience, what are users using to get to your page, which products & services brings you most benefits, which are the keywords/ terms/ search phrases that have the most volume.

The next step is to study the phrases that stands for those phrases. All in all, it's your core search terms. Don't over-do anything. You will probably end up with hundreds and thousands of search phrase results. Do the analysis later.

Phase 2: Sorting & Selecting

Keep the keywords you know will help in converting visitors and users into consumers. These keywords should be able to pull your customers in. also, the search phrase should directly represent your content and not be relevant for someone else's. Search phrases should be specific and not too broad. Leave the info queries for later.

Study the search volume of the phrases. Aggressively search for keywords both long tail and short tail. If they convert visitors then optimize them. If it's too short then there will be no conversions. Rule of thumb says two-four words query is more than enough.

Phrase 3: Organizing Process

Find out the intentions of the search engine user and divide terms appropriately. Ar the terms you are using for research, purchase or buying.

Recognize key pages. Decide which webpages are best suited for which kind of keywords. Each page of the site has an exclusive purpose. If more pages are require, build them.

Collect groups based on same underlying theme. For eg: You cannot put 'elegant' and 'cheap' together.

Last speaker for this discussion is Natala Menezes, Product Manager, Microsoft adCenter. She starts off by talking about some initiative going on in adCenter. People at adCenter want users to gain easy access to real information and simple to use tools. Here, she brings up the Keyword Service Platform. This is the holy grail for keyword information. Algorithms to extrapolate new terms from a set, define categorical relationships. Access to real data. Developmental platform. Apparently, adCenter has a team of industry experts who help and guide them with their own personal insight.

Better Together: adCenter + Excel 2007. These two created an application using the Excel platform as they know that search marketers spent a lot of time using the software. Natala states that keyword research is not so much about 'cut and paste' nor do you have to be an Excel or search engine optimization master as these aim at keyword research, forecast etc. Natala runs through the better together tool.

Hence, the panel comes to an end.

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Working at Microsoft - An adCenter Story

Lee Odden — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:33:34 +0000

Editor’s note: On occasion we reach out to people in the search marketing industry we’ve come to know and respect with a request to contribute. Today’s contribution comes from Microsoft’s adCenter Community Manager - Europe, Mel Carson. Mel’s job is to support, educate & evangelize through the adCenter Blog, industry forums, and to speak about adCenter at conferences such as SMX, SES, Pubcon and others. Mel writes his own blog at DigiTales & Other Stories.

This post tells a personal tale of getting involved with Microsoft at the beginning of adCenter’s deployment to the paid search marketing world along with some good examples of unique adCenter features and why Mel thinks it’s great working for Microsoft.

My first day at Microsoft began at 4am on 11th July 2005 as I got up in St Margaret’s, South West London, in order to get the Eurostar to Paris to witness the launch of the adCenter Pilot in France.

As the train trundled through the Paris countryside, I pondered what the next few months would hold. Had I made a mistake by jacking in my account director role at 24/7 Real Media? What would it be like working in one of the most well known companies in the world? Were all the interviews I went through going to be worth it?

When I logged into adCenter for the very first time later that afternoon I was, shall we say, distinctly underwhelmed. I thought to myself, “What have they been doing?”, and more importantly “what on earth am I doing here?!”

That evening our team was given a pep talk from our head of service operations:

“The next few months is not going to be easy. As we work both internally, and with our customers, to scale the product and onboard all our advertisers, have the courage to make difficult decisions, even if you make some mistakes. People rarely get anything right 1st time, and you never learn unless you go back over what you’ve done, and see if you could have done it any better.”

Those words settled me a great deal, and I realised it was game on!

We all had a challenge on our hands, to grow adCenter from its bare bones in partnership with both the development team in Redmond, and our advertisers dotted around the globe.

Every time we took on a new person in London in preparation for the UK launch in August 2006, they would utter after their first few days – “But I just thought you’d be a bit further along by now!”

That was the point! The paid search team was, to all intents and purposes, a start up, a brand new business for Microsoft. As with all new businesses, there’s always a period of learning, growth and, more often than not, growing pain! Once every one of my new colleagues got that, they knew they had an opportunity to shape the business using whatever skill or competency they’d been hired for.

The guys I work with, the adCenter Community Team, have a great role. Our mission is support advertisers, large or small, through the adCenter Blog and education programs, like the soon to be released adExcellence Program.

The reason why the team was set up was, when we came to market, one of the top two asks from advertisers was “great service please!” So we’re all over the search marketing forums, answering questions, providing tips, pointing people in the right direction and gathering feedback, feedback on adCenter that goes right back to the dev team who then act on it.

You’ll also find us at all the major conferences too, SMX, SES and PubCon among others, talking to delegates, chatting to the speakers, recruiting for betas, listening to ideas and problems, because you know what? It’s not about us or this Evil Empire I keep hearing about, it’s about you – The Advertisers, advertisers, advertisers!

The second big request from our customers was for more insight. Who is clicking on my ad? Who is searching for my brand term? Can you give me better targeting options? Microsoft adCenter’s demographic tools answered those questions and so did our adCenter Labs team.

These tools use Passport, or Windows Live ID data, to assess a searchers age and gender when they type in a keyword into Live Search. Within adCenter you can, for any given Ad Group, up-weight your bids by between 10% and 100% for your target demographic and so serve an ad that is likely to be more relevant to that user.

For example if you sell financial services products to people about to retire, what’s the point in wasting expensive clicks on users under 50 years-old? By up-weighting your bids by say 50% for searchers aged 50-plus, you’re more likely to rank higher for customers more likely to convert.

It doesn’t mean you exclude the other demographics though. This is just a great way of getting a better ranking for those customers you know will be more likely to convert, and advertisers that have utilized this functionality have seen dramatic reductions in cost per acquisition of up to 76%.

Microsoft adCenter Labs is the quickest place to see all this awesome innovation in action. Check out the demos for tools to help with Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Audience Intelligence and Emerging Media.

So not content with simply building a product that would do what others did before; the product team took the opportunity to push the boundaries, using existing Microsoft properties and research to give advertisers that extra edge and better ROI.

For me, those are the three things that I love about working at Microsoft:

We get encouraged to make decisions, learn from any mistakes, and grow into our roles.

We’re encouraged to get out there and meet our customers, find out their needs, work with them to help them get the best out of their campaigns, or do the best for their clients and not live in a bubble too far removed from reality.

And we get to innovate, working with some of the coolest gadgets, gizmos and widgets. Cross-pollinating technologies to build the beginnings of a great eco-system for advertisers to tap into our rich and diverse audience around the world.

The last couple of releases of adCenter have shown we’ve been listening, that we are agile and that we put the needs of our advertisers first, and in turn we’ve received great feedback from them.

If, for one second, I thought that we didn’t have our customer’s interests central to everything we do, I probably wouldn’t stick around.

But I know that’s not going to happen..

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MSN Jumps on Analytics Train

Stephen Pitts — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:37:22 +0000

From the adCenter Blog:

We are happy to announce that Project Gatineau, Microsoft’s new, free web analytics service, is ready for beta testing and the first invitations are now being sent to customers.

To manage Project Gatineau’s growth and give customers the best web analytics service possible, the beta is by invitation for US advertisers only for the moment.

All advertisers can request an invitation here: http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter-gatineau

Project Gatineau’s web analytics are useful to sites of all sizes – from smaller sites that can’t afford an expensive web analytics solution to larger sites looking for a boost in their web analytics capabilities.

So, what’s the big deal?

Microsoft has been promoting the project for some time now, as noted by Tamar at 10e20 back in January, and again in March during a review of low cost analytics:

With Gatineau around the corner (and we can still anticipate its launch), there are other free analytics applications that you should consider using on your site.

David Naylor showed off some screen shots while it was still in Alpha in July that were impressive. But Search Marketing Gurus stole the show with more specifics that will be employed in the new Gatineau.

There are still some very important questions that remain:

How will Gatineau be able to pull website owners away from their current analytics packages?

What can MSN bring to the table that hasn’t been offered by other analytics services?

Will this be added to the Webmaster Portal that was supposed to launch into private beta last month?
(still unconfirmed that it did launch in limited release)

MSN adCenter Labs has provided some unique tools for marketing and optimization, can this be what we should expect from Gatineau?

Have any of you signed up for the beta? If so, what are your early thoughts?

Google Analytics 101 from O’Reilly

AOL Testing OpenRide in Beta

SEOSurvey | Guide to SEO > MSN’s Beta Search vs. Yahoo! & Google

More Information from Microsoft on Webmaster Portal Beta

Google Goes for Bathroom Humor

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AdCenter Tweaks Its Campaign Manager

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:11:59 +0000

The campaigns Microsoft advertisers manage through the company's adCenter system should be easier to handle after a weekend of upgrades. For some reason, the adCenter bloggers are spacing out the details behind the recent round of updates to post throughout the week.

First up is the editorial upgrade, which helps people fill in everything they should for their campaign. The adCenter team said this will keeps ad lengths within limits, and ensure correct formatting of display and destination URLs.

Good editorial work means an approved ad will hit the network quickly. Ads that need to be fixed will be caught during the editorial process, saving the advertiser time in the editorial review process.

If an ad runs afoul of adCenter's guidelines, the Status column on the Keywords and Ad tabs will point advertisers to the details of the disapproval. This should make the process of changing disapproved content faster.

The adCenter blog should have more details about updates to campaign management and to reporting in future posts.

Microsoft Tweaks adCenter Quality Ranking

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:18:31 +0000

In an acknowledgment of how relevance in search advertising has been so successful, Microsoft moved to give higher quality ranked ads a better shot at appearing.

Slowly but surely, Microsoft and Yahoo have been moving closer to Google's model of slavish devotion to relevance when it comes to serving ads alongside content. They won't phrase it in those terms, but it's not difficult to see who the target is for online ad success.

Details of the update appeared on the adCenter blog. The changes will make the marketplace more dynamic, according to Microsoft:

As an advertiser, you can control whether your ads appear in the mainline by increasing either the Click Through Rate or the Max Bid. You can think of this as a quality threshold that you must cross in order to appear in the mainline. With this change, we expect most of your ads will continue to perform as they have in the past. However, there may be some cases where: • You could see your ads move in or out of the mainline depending on your CTR and set Max Bid
• You may need to bid more to maintain mainline positions
• You may see ads move up into the mainline without bidding more
• For ads remaining in the mainline, your actual CPC may increase

Advertisers have the usual ability to control their ad quality with edits to their ad copy, bid pricing, and other attributes. The greater emphasis on ad quality has been long in coming from Microsoft, but it isn't too late to be of benefit to the company's adCenter or MSN/Live Search product users.

The move coincides with the formal relaunch of Live Search 2.0 by Microsoft. They emphasized three particular verticals - health, shopping, and entertainment - with the update, as those categories pull some 40 percent of all search queries they see.

Microsoft Goes Local With AP

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:27:23 +0000

The first product of Microsoft's aQuantive acquisition is a combination of MSN Video and Atlas AdManager to create a video ad serving platform for the Associated Press that will enable AP media-member and customer websites to serve up local advertising with local content.

That accounts for about 1,800 U.S. affiliates using AP's Online Video Network. Microsoft gives examples like WCBD-TV in Charleston, S.C., and The Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn.

Microsoft and the AP hope the new delivery platform will drive deeper audience participation and generate advertising revenue for affiliates.

"Video advertising is growing in popularity, and the ability to attach local ads to local content is something that customers like the AP are seeing as a tremendous competitive advantage for their business," said Karl Siebrecht, president of Atlas.

Local ads will be served via Atlas AdManager, and sold directly via OVN affiliates; national video ad inventory will be served via Microsoft adCenter, sold exclusively through Microsoft's advertising sales force.

"The competition for eyeballs online in the news business is very tough, and our affiliates are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to more actively engage their users," said Jessica Hawk, director of Online Video for AP.

Hawk also called Microsoft's local ad-serving technology "a big step forward" in building viewer loyalty while building additional revenue for affiliate sites.

Microsoft Announces Content Ads Beta

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:04:12 +0000

Beginning August 29th, advertisers will be able to try out placing ads on Microsoft's content network pages. Users of adCenter have something new in store for next week. Microsoft plans to open up a beta test of its Content Ads product.

AdCenter product manager David Jakubowski announced the beta at the adCenter blog. He listed the highlights of the Content Ads test:

• More reach. With Content Ads, you can access the valued MSN audience on high-quality Microsoft content network pages, starting with day one, MSN® Tech & Gadgets, Money, Real Estate, and Windows Marketplace. Over time, we will introduce the rest of MSN, other Microsoft-owned properties, and premium partner sites. Until now, this premium inventory has been available directly only through the MSN sales team and has commanded premium pricing. Today, we are making it available to everyone at a price you will decide.
• Automatic Expansion. At the time of the upgrade, your campaigns will be automatically expanded to include content distribution.
• Key Controls. After the upgrade, you’ll be able to select where your ads distribute (search pages or content pages) and how much you pay per click.

Jakubowski also noted that clients who do not wish to take part in the beta, and keep search-only distribution of their ads, can opt to do so. The curious can view an online presentation about Content Ads for more information.

New Reports Added To AdCenter

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:33:07 +0000

Microsoft's AdCenter has placed click quality reports in their service for campaign managers to review for their advertising efforts. The new reporting functionality debuting on AdCenter will create reports about the quality of ad clicks. Microsoft also took the time to tout several studies that lauded the conversion rates enjoyed by ad clients.

The AdCenter blog explained how clients can view these new reports. Brendan Kitts, Program Manager for Click Quality for Microsoft adCenter, also noted how Microsoft views clicks as either standard quality (good) or low quality (bad):

Low-quality clicks are clicks that adCenter classifies as non-billable, including those that adCenter has identified as:
Invalid clicks
Clicks that have characteristics of low or unclear commercial intent
Clicks that exhibit patterns of unusual activity
Clicks that originate from spiders, robots, questionable sources, or test servers
Clicks that should be filtered out for other reasons
Some traffic that adCenter has flagged as low quality might ultimately result in conversions for you, which is why the label "low quality," rather than "invalid," provides a more accurate description of this class of traffic.

Users customize reports by selecting from available values for low quality clicks, impressions, or click conversions, among other choices. AdCenter clients can find the new reporting in their account management tool.

Rumor: MySpace Swap For Yahoo Stake

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:55:22 +0000

News Corp could be offering Jerry Yang a deal where they would trade MySpace in exchange for a stake in Yahoo.

Rumor: MySpace Swap For Yahoo Stake

Way back in the early 20th Century, legendary bluesman Robert Johnson made a deal with the Devil at a crossroads. The story said Johnson traded his soul for the ability to play guitar better than anyone.

New Yahoo CEO Yang may be at a crossroads only a couple of days into his duties, with Rupert Murdoch playing the role of Ol' Scratch. The Devil wants 25 percent of Yahoo, in exchange for the social networking website MySpace.

The Times of London thinks the negotiations could be in jeopardy, now that Terry Semel has been deposed from the CEO post at Yahoo. News Corp could throw in other goodies like its gaming network IGN to sweeten the deal.

Another social networking site's success seems to play a role in this deal. In the report, the Times noted how Murdoch acknowledged to the Wall Street Journal that Facebook, a one-time Yahoo takeover target, has been on the rise.

Yahoo could make a belated entry into social networking, and an opportunity to throw out Google's ads and search, by taking News Corp up on its MySpace offer. Yang and company just have to decide if it's worth part of Yahoo's soul to do so.