PPC Blog » Microsoft Adcenter

Microsoft Adcenter CPC Bug

PPCblogger — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:22:29 +0000

As reported over at the SEroundtable and discussed on both WMW and Digital Point Forums, there seems to be a big problem with bids, with lots of advertisers being charged over their bid.

Base bids’ seem to be of little relevance, with actual average cpc’s being reported to be much higher. It seems whatever Google do, Microsoft soon follow…

Although I think most advertisers would of preferred Microsoft to just rename ‘Orders’ to ‘Ad groups’ and provide some decent volume…

A screen shot as below -

As you can see, this advertisers base bid was 0.50 cents and was charged an average cpc of £281.58.

After looking through a number of my own campaigns, I can see quite a few bids in excess of their base bid when they should not be. Bare in mind – Not all the examples I found are as outrageous as the above, so keep an eye on your campaigns.

I have heard from a Microsoft rep that its just a reporting issue, rather than a bid management problem. But who knows? Advertisers will of course be credited back any overpayments, but it would be advisable to keep an eye on terms you think you have been overcharged on.

More chatter over at Threadwatch.

adCenter Testing Content Network In US

PPCblogger — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:33:00 +0000

There’s been a few threads recently about adCenter migrating some advertisers in the US over to their content ads pilot program and last week the adCenter blog confirmed the upgrade.

Upgrading to Content Ads on January 25, 2007 This week, some of our U.S. advertisers received an e-mail notification that their accounts will be migrated to our Beta site on Thursday, January 25, 2007, as part of the adCenter Content Ads pilot program. The e-mail notification also explained that the campaigns within migrated accounts will automatically be expanded to include distribution on content pages within the Microsoft network.

The adCenter blog has a whole FAQ about content adverts if advertisers have any concerns.

Much like Adwords & Yahoo, adCenter will provide advertisers with the ability to set content bids seperately from search at both adgroup and keyword level. Instructions can be seen over at the adCenter blog.

MSN adCenter System Bug Causing Adverts To Show Intermittently

PPCblogger — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 14:46:55 +0000

I have finally had it confirmed by MSN UK that they are experiencing issues with adverts that are appearing intermittently after every ‘X’ number of refreshes.

This is a system bug and hence a fairly widespread problem affecting many advertisers on the network. MSN’s tech support team are trying to address the issues currently, but this has been an issue for sometime already.

Unfortunately there is nothing advertisers can do apart from wait for the problem to be rectified…

Microsoft adCenter To De-Dupe PPC Adverts By Display URL

PPCblogger — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:39:28 +0000

Although they haven’t realised the news to the public domain just yet, as of mid-November adCenter will de-dupe ads by display url. Currently two sponsored adverts with the same display urls (example.com & example.com) can both be shown at the same time in one SERP. This move to allow only one display url per advert in a search results page will be in-line with what Google already have in place.

This may have a significant impact on advertisers and affiliates alike running ads using the same display url. In the similar way Google decides what advert to show, the advert with the highest click through rate (CTR)/bid will be served regardless of which ad is associated with the real trademark owner.

Of course if you have a registered trademark, aCenter can restrict other advertisers bidding on your terms.

Microsofts Advanced Match Laughable

PPCblogger — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:14:35 +0000

I find it incredible just how bad Microsoft’s advanced keyword match option is. Adavanced match or ‘broad match’ as its known on Google basically allows the search engines to add additional words to your keyword phrase, in any order so that your advert appears against plurals or variations. Obviously this type of match is less targetted and in a lot of cases less relevant as terms you do not want to appear against can be ‘matched’….(this is why negative keywords should be used).

I have seen some strange broad matching many times, however, Microsoft / MSN Adcenter seem to have unearthed new levels of complete irrelevance in their advanced match option it’s actually scarey.

Without picking on this advertiser for any reason bar being the first completely irrelevant advert I could find with tracking – its quite interesting to see what searches adverts can display for with such ease and in many cases not obvious terms either. Obviously this look hinges on the accuracy of the keyword tracking, but I have seen so many instances of this, I believe it to be completely accurate.

A dating company in particular called Dating for Parents happened to be the first I came accross. Check out some of the examples below.

Under a search for ‘Golf Club’

You can see their advert appears. Why? Well, from their tracking we can see its matching against ‘Dating Club’.

Relevant huh? It gets better.So if you think thats fairly irrelevant, try searching for anything with ‘club’ pretty much. Say a ‘night club‘ or ‘boat club‘? They come right up again. So MSN seems to be matching fairly heavily against not just the main prefix, but also the suffix. Which means possible terms for advanced match could be fairly limitless.So here are some more examples. Take a look at a search for ‘manchester builders‘

So what could this be matching against? Believe it or not, ‘Dating in Manchester’. Again… its matching against ‘manchester’ simply being in the keyword, which could hardly be less relevant its laughable. That’s only because its not my money though.

So as before, if MSN is matching terms against club, whats it matching against manchester? How about a search for ‘jobs in Manchester‘

or ‘surfboards in Manchester‘?So who has their keywords set as advanced match in MSN Adcenter without negatively mactching everything under the sun?!

MSN Adcenter To Launch In UK On The 15th

PPCblogger — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 08:51:08 +0000

So MSN is due for release to selected agencies in the UK from the 15h of August.

After hearing so much from its BETA over in the US & Singapore & having the chance to play with the demos at SES it will be great to finally get our hands on the version here.

In theory, most of its teething problems should also be sorted by now to. So we should be able to use Firefox…!

Let me hear your feedback!