adCenter Blog

Bing UK Summer Ice Cream Giveaway Photos and Fun Stats

2010-07-28T10:32:00Z

Back at the beginning of June, Cedric Chambaz wrote about our Bing Ice Cream Give Away . Throughout June, we had a Bing-branded ice cream van travelling in and around London handing out ice lollies to passers by. In fact, the tour was such a success, we extended it by two weeks and took it to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester! The team chatted to hundreds of consumers, giving them a demo of Bing and explaining all the cool features while they slurped on their popsicles! At Microsoft, we’re...(read more)

Feedback and Feature Requests: Share Your Thoughts and Help Us Improve Microsoft adCenter

2010-07-27T16:00:00Z

If you're a regular reader of the adCenter Blog--and if so, you rock!--you know that periodically we pop up to ask for feedback on how we're doing. Your feedback is crucial for us to help bubble up pain points, feature requests and give visibility to your thoughts on adCenter and how we can improve it. If you'd like to share what's on your mind, you can... 1.) Use the adCenter Feedback Form , simply enter your feedback and/or feature requests, and click "Submit". 2.) Add...(read more)

adCenter Desktop Beta 7.4 Update Release Notes (July 2010)

2010-07-26T21:29:00Z

This update for adCenter Desktop includes several fixes:

Fixed: FR/UK users receiving errors on application startup after upgrading.
Fixed: Users unable to subscribe to different accounts with the same name under the same customer.
Fixed: “Internal error” when uploading account with too many editorial rejections.
Fixed: Agency users suffering application crash when clicking copy to Excel or when trying to export account.
Fixed: Some agency users receiving "Target ID is invalid" error when uploading new targets.
Fixed: Validation error after importing large numbers of ads/keywords into very large accounts.

This update also includes new updates to the import feature:

The Import Summary filter is being added for better visibility of your imported items. The Import Summary filter is an additional item in the "view" drop down menu that filters the grid to show only items recently imported. This view is helpful for reviewing and checking the items recently imported, for errors and consistency. After importing files into the desktop, the view will automatically switch to the “last import” view to allow you to quickly see the items you’ve imported and any potential issues that may have occurred.

Note: With this upgrade you will find Desktop tool at industry parity for market and language neutral exports and imports, making it easy to exchange MSN/Google bulksheets. Any French files previously exported from FR version of Desktop (before installing the July upgrade) will not be usable for Desktop imports after you install the July upgrade. You should create new exports after installing the upgrade for a smooth experience.

Users who are unable to launch the desktop or upgrade will need to uninstall the desktop and re-install it from the following location:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=164973&clcid=0x409

Share your questions or comments in the Desktop Forum.

SEM Advanced Series: Budget Optimization – Daily Budget Goal

2010-07-23T16:00:00Z

This is the 3rd post in the SEM Advanced Series, a continuation of the SEM Intermediate Series and SEM Beginner Series. These posts are intended for search engine marketing professionals looking for guidance in monitoring and adjusting the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC campaign.

For the last installment of this series on budgeting, we’ll be covering the Daily Budget Goal option in budget setting, looking at the same questions we asked in the introduction post. The Daily Budget Goal is basically setting a monthly maximum budget and then telling adCenter what you’d ideally like each day to attain. This can be beneficial for certain goals, which I’ll elaborate on below. Keep in mind that if you set your daily target for lower than your monthly maximum budget you will not receive any error in adCenter; this is important because you could be limiting your budgets. If you have a $1000 monthly budget, but only $25/day daily target, you’re essentially only using 75% of your budget each month.

Fitting Your Business Goals

Results Driven: With this setting you have a specific target you’d like to attain each day. As a best practice you should always be pulling budget reports to see how you’re landing against this goal. If you are going into budget pause, this could be a good move to rethink the other budget types or assign a higher budget for these particular campaigns

- Optimization Suggestions:
  - Be sure that you’re running keyword performance reports and optimizing the keywords to your ROI goals. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can help you devise bids and understand the auction on particular keywords.
  - You can also run a search query report to devise negative keywords to qualify the traffic you’re receiving. Implementing negative keywords helps ensure that the traffic coming to your website is better qualified and therefore, more likely to convert.
  - If you’re looking for conversions, enable our conversion tracking to make optimization easier.

Branding: For branding campaigns with limited budgets this is a way to optimize to a daily amount. Be sure to pull budget reporting to make sure you are live at the best times for your brand.

- Optimization Suggestions:
  - Run a budget report to see if more reallocation of budget is necessary. For brand advertisers this is the most vital campaign to have live at all times. This reporting will tell you when you’re being paused so you can optimize from there.
  - Keep a careful eye on when your ads are most profitable, you can add additional targeting by geographic location or demographic to qualify and optimize for the leads you have coming in. For example, if you are only able to ship to certain states, or appeal to a certain demographic more often than others.
  - Remember: Be mindful not to over-target your potential consumers with branding campaigns; you’d be surprised how many times your perceived and actual demographics vary. Pull data to make sure this is correct.

Lead Generation: If you are looking to spend a specific amount per day on lead generation for your business make sure that you’re revisiting your results regularly and analyzing the traffic you’re receiving to effectively use your budget.

- Optimization Suggestions:
  - Run a budget report to see if more movement of budget is necessary to meet your lead goals. This reporting will tell you when you’re being paused so you can optimize from there.
  - When do your leads come in? If you have conversion tracking enabled, analyze when you’re getting the most leads. For example, if the weekends are really slow, it might be more beneficial to allocate budget to Mon-Fri traffic instead, or target a certain time frame during the day and exclude another (Use Demographic Targeting - Is it right for you? by Rob to help).

I hope that you’ve found a lot of value in this series. Please be sure to read through the others if you're just catching this for the first time. We’ve examined Spend Until Depleted and Divide Across Month, as well as looking at some questions to ask yourself before setting your budgets up. Good luck!

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Installing adCenter Desktop With Elevated Privileges

2010-07-21T16:01:00Z

In organizations where users are not the administrators of their computers, there are several methods of elevating the adCenter Desktop installation:

Log on to the computer as an administrator and install adCenter Desktop.
Use Group Policy software installation and management to assign or publish adCenter Desktop.
Use a software management tool, such as Microsoft Systems Management Server, in an administrative context.
Setting the Windows Installer policy Always install with elevated privileges allows a user without administrator rights to the computer to install any Windows Installer package.

To allow users with limited permissions to install and update adCenter Desktop Enable the Always install with elevated privileges Windows Installer policy under User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Installer and Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Installer.

Celebrity Video from Dougray Scott’s Leuka Charity Golf Day Sponsored by Bing

2010-07-21T10:02:13Z

It’s not often Hollywood comes to Chiswick in West London. But last Friday it did just that! Last week, I wrote that we’d been honoured to sponsor Dougray Scott’s Mini Masters golf tournament in aid of the charity Leuka . It was a fantastic day filled with great humour, fabulous music from the likes of James Walsh and The View, plus some superb (and not so superb) golf from the celebrities and their teams that Dougray had assembled. In the video we chat to Hugh Grant, James Nesbitt, Tim Henman, Damian...(read more)

Microsoft Starts Testing on Yahoo! in Mid-July

2010-07-20T21:28:00Z

As we continue to make progress implementing various aspects of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance , our two companies continue to work together towards the goal of providing a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season. An important part of our approach is to do the necessary tests to help ensure all of our systems and processes are in place. In mid-July, we began testing the delivery of organic results from Bing...(read more)

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance News: Editorial Guideline Updates (US and Canada)

2010-07-20T21:00:00Z

The upcoming Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is without a doubt one of the most exciting changes I’ve seen in the search engine marketing (SEM) industry since I started working in it back in 2005. Although I’m looking forward to seeing how this new partnership will alter the SEM landscape, there’s no doubt Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! advertisers alike are looking at the not-too-distant future with a skeptical eye and want as much transparency as possible when it comes to knowing what’s coming, when and why. We were recently given some information on how the new, hybrid Editorial Guidelines are shaping up, and so in the spirit of providing that transparency, we wanted to pass that info along to all of you.

The new Editorial Guidelines combine the best of both search providers’ network quality policies, resulting in not only more effective ads, but also helping to create a safer search marketplace for the growing Bing and Yahoo! Search audience of 158 million searchers¹ in the U.S. and 15 million in Canada¹. Below is a brief summary of the editorial changes adCenter advertisers can expect to see implemented over the next few months, starting in August.

NOTE: As the new guidelines take effect, there may be slight delays in getting your ads live. Be sure to load your keywords and ads in advance so that they have time to undergo editorial review.

New Additions to Disallowed Content

Electronic cigarettes – if you’re currently running adCenter campaigns that advertise electronic cigarettes, these will soon join the list of disallowed products on adCenter.

Usenet content – while you’ll still find Usenet results in the organic listings on Bing, the PPC advertising of Usenet content will no longer be allowed once these new changes roll out.

Other Policy Changes

Privacy Policy – if you collect any personally identifiable information from visitors to your site, make sure you’re in compliance with the updated privacy policy.

Pharmacy and Prescription Only Medications – sellers of prescription drugs online should review this policy for applicability to their campaigns.

Ads and Content / Relevancy and Quality – it’s always a best practice to make sure you’re following these consolidated rules and tips to set your ads up for success in adCenter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I disagree with disapproval in my account, how can I get this changed?

A: If you feel strongly that your ad or keywords were disapproved incorrectly, you can attempt to appeal the decision. The adCenter customer support team responds to all appeals as quickly as possible; however, the appeal process may take as many as 10 business days. Please note that if your appeal is denied, that decision is final.

Q: What can I do now to prepare for these changes and avoid downtime?

A: Review the updated Editorial Guidelines to see if your ads and keywords may be affected.

Q: How do I know if my account is affected by the new editorial guidelines?

A: Review the updated Editorial Guidelines to see if your ads and keywords may be affected. Over the coming weeks, if your accounts are affected you may notice new disapprovals in your account. If your campaigns have been affected by the new Editorial Guidelines, use the Ads and Keywords Disapprovals Tool to help manage your disapprovals and get your ads live.

If you have questions that aren’t answered here, leave a comment below or visit our forums and post your question there; Microsoft staff will address your questions or comments in either spot.

¹comScore qSearch May 2010

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The One Stop Shop for Common Microsoft adCenter Help and Resources Links (Part I of II)

2010-07-19T16:00:00Z

As we all know, Bing and Microsoft Advertising have hundreds of resources and help tutorials all over the internet to help you, the advertiser, learn more about our product offerings and how you can be successful online marketers.

In an effort to help save you valuable time, I have provided a list of organized adCenter help and resource links to assist you including editorial guidelines, bulk management tools, video tutorials, Bing resources and Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance updates…

Microsoft adCenter FAQ & Help

- Editorial Guidelines

- Trademark Policy

- Available adCenter Reports

- Available adCenter Report Attributes

- How to Schedule a Report

- Create & Change adCenter Performance Alerts (ensure your email is correct by clicking “My Settings” in upper right hand corner in adCenter UI when logged in)

- adCenter Conversion Tracking

Bulk Management & Optimization Tools

- Microsoft adCenter Desktop

- Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI)

- Microsoft adCenter Desktop & MAI Video Tutorials

- Microsoft adCenter Labs

- adCenter Ad Preview Tool

Microsoft Advertising (Official Site)

- adCenter Learning Center

- adCenter Best Practices

- Case Study Research Library

- Microsoft adExcellence Certification

Stay Informed

- Microsoft adCenter Community (Official Blog)

- Microsoft adCenter Community Forums

- Microsoft adCenter Summer 2010 Upgrade: New Features

- Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance

Get to Know Bing

- Bing Community (Official Blogs)

- Bing Toolbox

- Webmaster Center

This list of links is only the tip of the iceberg! In the next couple of weeks, I will be posting a comprehensive list of best practice optimization links including various adCenter blog posts. Best practice topics include budgeting, match types, mobile, content, keywords, ads, account structure, targeting and niche verticals.

What best practices would you like to see included in the link list? What types of information do you find yourself taking too much time to find? Until next time!

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New Video from the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance: what does it mean for you?

2010-07-15T20:27:07Z

The team’s put together a video illustrating how the upcoming unified marketplace will help you reach your Yahoo! Search and Bing customers through one platform – Microsoft adCenter. Take a look! For more information, check out the Search Alliance website , and stay tuned here on the blog for news and updates....(read more)

Microsoft adCenter Home Page Dashboard: Instant Insight Into Your Campaigns

2010-07-15T14:00:00Z

The new adCenter Home page dashboard has been released as part of the adCenter Summer 2010 Upgrade. The dashboard provides a quick snapshot of your online campaigns, and it resides right on the Home page. As soon as you login to adCenter, you will get instant insight about all your campaigns across the entire account in a matter of seconds.

The new Dashboard is designed to focus on 3 basic advertiser needs: spotting campaign trends, identifying the top and bottom campaigns, and watching for budget depletion. Furthermore, the campaigns on the dashboard are deep-linked to the Campaigns tab work flow; once you have identified a campaign that needs your attention, clicking it brings you to the exact workflow page under Campaigns tab where you can take action.

Silverlight version and non-Silverlight version

We have provided two versions of the dashboard: one for Silverlight and the other for non-Silverlight. You can switch to either version by clicking the toggle on the top right of the dashboard. We encourage our users to use Silverlight version since it provides a richer, more visual dashboard with graphs and more interactive features than the other one. If you have Silverlight v4 installed, the Home page will launch the Silverlight version automatically. If you haven’t installed Silverlight v4, the non-Silverlight version dashboard is launched instead. In this case, you can easily upgrade to Silverlight version by clicking “Try it now” at the bottom of the non-Silverlight dashboard.

Dashboard gadgets: Silverlight version

Campaign trends gadget:

provides trend graphs for your all campaigns within the account. You can select various date ranges for each campaign to see how it performs over time. You can see trend graphs for each metric such as Impressions and Clicks individually, or put them together to see how they relate to each other.

Alerts gadget:

provides the important alerts on your accounts, billing and campaigns. It also provides news and FAQ as well.

Campaign performance gadget:

provides a data grid showing you the performance metrics for all your campaigns within the account. Sorting the data grid by Impressions, Clicks or other metrics by clicking a column header, you can identify the top campaigns or bottom campaigns right away.

Campaign spend vs. budget gadget:

provides a data grid showing you the budget depletion information on each of your campaigns within the account. It goes beyond simply providing the depletion percentage- it provides forecasting, warnings and suggestions on your campaigns that may run out of budget before the end of month.

Dashboard gadgets: non-Silverlight version

Campaign trends gadget:

provides trend graphs for your top 10 campaigns within the account. You can select various date ranges for each campaign to see how it performs over time. You can see a trend graph for each metric such as Impressions and Clicks individually, or put them together to see how they relate to each other.

Alerts gadget:

provides the important alerts on your accounts, billing and campaigns. It also provides news and FAQ as well.

Top campaigns by spend gadget:

provides a data grid showing you the performance metrics for your top 10 campaigns by Spend within the account.

Coming Soon

We will continue to iterate and improve the dashboard. Watch for:

· Usability updates, including the option to keep “All Campaigns” always at bottom in Campaign performance gadget.

· An increase in the maximum number of Campaigns in an account.

· More customization capabilities to allow advertisers to tailor the gadgets to their specific business needs.

I am one of the program managers at adCenter responsible for designing and implementing the dashboard. Would love to hear feedback from you. You could post your comments on this thread or in the adCenter Forum.

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SEM Advanced Series: Budget Optimization – Divide Across Month

2010-07-14T16:00:00Z

This is the 2nd post in the SEM Advanced Series, a continuation of the SEM Intermediate Series and SEM Beginner Series. These posts are intended for search engine marketing professionals looking for guidance in monitoring and adjusting the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC campaign.

Today we’ll deep dive into the Divide Budget Across Month budget setting, looking at the same questions we asked in the introduction post SEM Intermediate Series: Understanding Goals and Success in Budgeting.

The Divide Budget Across Month setting is essentially taking your total budget amount and telling adCenter to allocate it across the month to ensure it spreads roughly even. Keep in mind that if your daily amount fluctuates (for example if your daily allotment doesn’t hit the goal, you change your budget amount, etc.) adCenter will recalculate it to achieve that budget.

Fitting Your Business Goals

Results Driven: If you have significant traffic, but a limited budget and want to make sure you’re showing throughout the month without any down time, this may be a good option. Use the optimization techniques below to make sure you're moderating received traffic and getting the most out of your budget.

Optimization Suggestions:
- Be sure that you’re running keyword performance reports and optimizing the keywords to your return on investment (ROI) goals. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can help you devise bids and understand the auction on particular keywords.
- You can also run a search query report to devise negative keywords to better qualify the traffic you’re receiving. This way, when you do receive clicks, it’s more relevant and enticing to the end user.

Branding: For branding campaigns with limited budgets; this is a simple way to show throughout the month. Additionally, you can also optimize your branding budget by monitoring this campaign closely.

Optimization Suggestions:
- Run a budget report to see if more reallocation of budget is necessary; for brand advertisers, this is the most vital campaign to have live at all times. This reporting will tell you when you’re being paused so you can optimize from there.

Lead Generation: If you are generating leads (either as a business owner or a lead firm) it’s important to create a high volume of potential leads at optimal CPA goals. If you are planning on making sure your budget stretches throughout the month, there are several optimization techniques you can use to easily increase that budget’s effectiveness.

Optimization Suggestions:
- When do your leads come in? If you have conversion tracking enabled, analyze when you’re getting the most leads. For example, if the weekends are really slow, it might be more beneficial to allocate budget to Mon-Fri traffic instead, or target a certain time frame during the day and exclude another (review Demographic Targeting - Is it right for you? by Rob to help).
  - Keep a careful eye on when your ads are most profitable; you can add additional targeting by geographic location or demographic to qualify and optimize for the leads you have coming in.
  - Run a search query report to devise negative keywords to qualify the traffic you’re receiving.

In the next part of this series we’ll look at Daily Budget Goal; understanding how to effectively use this functionality and create optimization around a goal-oriented budget setting.

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Bing UK Sponsors Leuka Mini Masters Golf Tournament in London

2010-07-14T11:04:00Z

On Friday, we’ll be joining Dougray Scott and his celebrity friends for a round or two of golf in Chiswick, London. Bing will be sponsoring the Leuka Mini Masters event which looks set to be a day of thrills, spills and (hopefully) the odd hole-in-one, all in the name of charity. Leuka is a Leukaemia charity based in Hammersmith Hospital that: “Raises funds to support life-saving research into the causes and treatment of leukaemia and other blood disorders. Its goal is simple: to create...(read more)

Bing Sweepstakes: Winners Will Be Chosen on July 19th... Enter Today!

2010-07-13T19:08:00Z

If you didn't see our first announcement or the tweets via the @adCenter or @MSAdvertising feeds, this is just a quick reminder that time is running out to enter the Bing Sweepstakes (choose your location to enter: US | UK ). Winners will be chosen at random on July 19th, so if you'd like a chance at winning cool Bing prize packages with mouse pads, computer skins, pens, stickers, cups and more, you've only got a few days left! Sign in to adCenter | Need an account? Sign up now Share...(read more)

Conversion Tracking: What It Is and How to Enable and Disable It in Microsoft adCenter

2010-07-12T15:00:00Z

Conversion tracking refers to an optional reporting metric that helps you measure the success of your PPC campaigns—and more accurately evaluate your return on investment—through the use of a tracking script embedded on your website. Once implemented, this script reports back to adCenter when a user (who arrived at your site through your adCenter ad) performs some sort of desirable action while there.

Enabling Conversion Tracking for adCenter

When a user clicks on your adCenter ad, what is it you’re hoping they do after arriving at your website? You’ll need to have a clear idea what you consider a conversion to be before enabling this feature in your search and/or content campaigns because adCenter offers three different options for tracking conversions (clicking on the links below will bring you to the Learning Center for instructions on implementing each method):

Count One Conversion Per Click - Use this method if you want the first conversion to occur when a user makes the first click. Any subsequent conversions from the same click will not be counted. You may wish to use this to improve conversion counts or when you have smaller, less complex web sites. This is the most commonly used option by advertisers.

Count One Conversion Per Unique URL - Use this method if you are able to embed a unique code into your URLs and want to count based on unique values. Traditionally these values have been session IDs, receipt numbers or any combination of values that you can use to singularly identify a visitor.

Count All Conversions - Use this method if you want to count all conversion events, and if you have your own way of handling refreshes or wish to track a raw number of conversions associated to a single click. These values are traditionally session IDs, receipt numbers and any combination of values that you can use to singularly identify a visitor.

Disabling Conversion Tracking for adCenter

Should you decide for whatever reason that you’d like to turn off conversion tracking in your adCenter campaigns, it’s a fairly simple process to do so (the below content is taken directly from adCenter Help):

Click the Campaigns tab.
In the Campaign column, click the name of the campaign for which you want to stop conversion tracking.
On the Campaign selected page, click Change settings.
Under Campaign settings, clear the Track conversions check box.
Remove the code snippet that you placed within the HTML body tags of your conversion webpages.

Note: When you stop conversion tracking, your reports still contain the conversion data that was collected while conversion tracking was on. However, conversion data is not collected after you stop conversion tracking.

If after reading through this post you feel as though you need more detail on this topic, I’d recommend checking out both the Conversion Tracking How-To Guide that’s linked to at the bottom of each of the instruction pages above, as well as Mary Berk's post, adCenter Conversion Tracking: Helping Advertisers Improve Their Campaigns.

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