Conversion tracking was working fine up until Saturday (7/8) then all of the sudden, it stopped working completely. No changes have been made to our site or our account. Has anyone else had this happen? How do I fix this?

What can you do...... they have a "work around". Get their new tracking script and replace the old one!!!!!! Why? Found this out today:

Today I received an email from MSN, and I quote: Earlier this month (July), Microsoft adCenter went through some system upgrades which included changing our homepage from https://advertising.msn.com to https://advertising.microsoft.com. These apply to the conversion tracking script also!!!

PLUS

The support team told me this:
Conversion tracking will only work if the searcher/clicker is using "certain builds" of IE6 -- It works ONLY for some releases of I.E.6 (not all) -- NOT FireFox, NOT Opera, NOT any other browser. They also told me that the cookie (for catching latent conversions following clicks) is a cookie that is good for 30 minutes.....

Thanks a lot... that should definitely fix it. Its totally ridiculous that MS would make this change to its conversion tracking file and not tell those of us using it.

Hi everyone,
I apologize for this - we're looking into this and I'm hoping to have an update for you later this afternoon.

Thanks,
adCenter411

Since the new code was added to one of my client's sites this morning I have had conversions recorded by MSN. I hope this will really fix it.

I agree that MSN should let everybody know and not sit on this information. They tell me they have no intention of informing their entire client base. They say not enough of them use conversion tracking, all the rest would consider it spam if they got an e-mail that contained a fix that didn't affect them. I'd be glad to recieve e-mails telling me they had fixed something even if I wasn't having the problem. Then I know I would be informed of other problems I am not aware of. Now I am sure I will NEVER know unless I find the problem myself.

I also find it funny that at least 4 hours after I was told customer service knew of the problem and the fix that adCenter411 still was unaware of the fix at all. Not much good information coming from there, huh?

Just wanted to get more details on the issue before I posted...the development team is working on the possibility of a back-end fix for this. In the meantime, as jbgilbert said, you can manually fix this by updating your tracking code from referencing adcenter.msn.com to reference adcenter.microsoft.com. You can get the code snippet from the Order Settings page.

Thank you for your patience, and I am sorry about this inconvenience.

Thanks,
adCenter411

However.... we don't plan to fix ALL the accounts. Many of our clients have to PAY hard dollars to have their web design firms make the changes.

Duhhhhh....... didn't think of that did you MSN?

Which is why they are keeping this hush hush and still working on a back end fix. Hoping most won't even realize the problem occurred.

My point to you 411 is that I had been given this information at 9:00am CST by customer service. Had you looked into it BEFORE you posted at 3:02 PM CST (seems like the smart thing to do) you should have been able to give the answer RIGHT THEN, not "later this afternoon". Or at least you should have had the answer in minutes, not hours. If not, what good are you for information? Once again we heard the same lines we get from customer service....."I don't know", "let me research it", still no answers, we have to help ourselves......

Thanks for the feedback MSI. I totally agree that this would have been the best way to approach this. We are working in real-time on something we did not expect to affect customers. I am releasing the details as soon as they are available to me. We actually are looking at informing the entire customer base about this issue to ensure that folks that use this feature have the best information possible.

Please know that we are working as fast as possible to address this issue.

Thanks,
adCenter411

Let's just leave it at this... In my opinion MSN is too slow in getting needed information to it's own customer service team as well as to it's customers.

Now in case others do care, I find that the fix does work. My only client left on MSN is in an industry where we get high daily volumes of conversions and I can already see in the hourly reports that I am getting, what I feel is a normal number of conversions showing again. Yesterday I went to an order page, copied the new code and had it inserted in my client's webpage (at no cost to him thank goodness). By the end of the afternoon conversion tracking was functioning again.

Adcenter411...

You said you would get back to us yesterday afternoon (Thursday).

Is your response of Thursday/Friday "we are working on it" and that's it?

That's the standard support center answer and nothing ever seems to happen. Is not this serious enough to give clients an ETA?

Hi everyone,
The development team resolved this issue last night. Now, conversion tracking codes with either msn.com of microsoft.com domains will work.

To confirm, the conversion tracking stopped on Saturday, 7/08, as PPC mentioned in this thread. We're working to get an email out to all affected customers to let them know about the issue.

I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience on this.
--adCenter411

adcenter411

are you sure this is fixed. the reports indicate NO data at all for July 16th..

Hey JB,
The reporting lag is a separate issue. It shows no conversions because it doesn't have any data past 6am PST Saturday.

They of course have no ETA for fixing the reporting issue so we can check on the conversion issue!!

well darn MSI, you have more answers that the MSN support desk! thanks for the input...

You're welcome, JB. I found this place looking for somewhere to get better support than at the 800 number. I hope if we all keep exchanging info amongst ourselves that we will all get the answers faster. It may seem like I know alot, but i'm just passing info I got from them at 6AM PST. I seem to have to call them about one thing or another every day so I hit them as early as I can.

WELL..... now it's July 18th and the reports all stop with data no later than July 15th....

Is this a lag? If so, it's unacceptably long!

On adcenter support line now -- they now tell me that the conversion tracking still does not work unless you physically replace the conversion tracking code with the new one!

What is the real story adcenter411????????

No JB,
I went and checked my stats after your first post today. You were right, it is not working again. I called them and was told "they are working on it" as usual and there IS NOT currently a fix for the new problem (apparently they lost blocks of time on the conversion data). Asked why they had not sent out another e-maill to let us know (they've known since early today) they had no response......

So the daily data was finally caught up, but what difference does that make? When I run an hourly report for yesterday I see a total of 25 conversions. When I run a daily report for yesterday it says I had 45 conversions!! Which is correct? The same occurs for all these days that were just caught up. My back end reports show 28 for yesterday, so I would like to assume that the hourly reports are more correct, but compared to my back end reports the other days are not nearly as close and the hourly reports seem to have problems too.

adCenter 411 this is TWO WEEKS of no reliable conversion information, and no hope of it being fixed soon. How am I suposed to optimize an account that I can't get correct reporting on? You are costing my client money because I can't help lower his costs efficiently. What are YOU doing to help us with this problem that you have known about for days now? What is ANYONE at MSN doing to resolve this problem? I asked for a call back by the end of the day yesterday to let me know where this issue stood, and couldn't get that. Sure the rep put a note in the file saying she had tried to call and couldn't get me, but that is BUNK. I work at home and was here ALL DAY. My phone shows NO CALL at the time she says she called and if she did why was there no message left on my voice mail if nothing else? Lies and false information is all we get from MSN constantly. How can I even feel like the charges are correct for this account if you can't eve get your daily reports to reflect the same totals as the hourly reports? What recourse do I have? Who is going to refund my client money that he shouldn't have spent because I STILL can't optimize ANY word in his account? Who can prove to me that my client is being charged correctly?
Since you only seem to reply to those threads you feel like and since you don't do that at any consistent time, I don't expect to hear from you, but eveyone else should know about these decrepencies since MSN won't let us know..........

Firstly, I want to apologize for the issues that you have been having recently regarding conversion tracking and reporting delays. I want to give you an update regarding both of these situations:
Conversion tracking should now be working for all customers - those who changed their code, as well as those who chose to leave the old code in place.
We are still experiencing some delays in reporting. However, we are aggressively working to eliminate the lag, and now have updates as follows:
Hourly data is available through 7/21/2006 8:00 AM PDT
Daily data is available through 7/20/2006
Weekly data is available through 7/14/2006
Monthly data is available through 7/14/2006
Yearly data is available through 7/14/2006

MSI, you mention that you are seeing a discrepency between your daily report and your hourly report for the same time flight. I have escalated the senario internally and would appreciate any detailed information you could provide. If you're able, please sticky mail me so we can work towards a swift resolution.

Thanks,
adCenter411

adCenter411,
I have sent you the information you requested. I gave you my account number and four days worth of stats to show you the problem. I also told you exactly what reports I ran to get that information so you should be able to run those same reports in my account and see them for yourself. I also sent you totals I recieved from my backend reporting for those same four days. I sent this to you at 2:55 CST today. If that is not enough info to recognize there is a new problem that needs immediate attention, then I give up.

Just wanted everyone to know that adCenter411 did relpy and they now recognize that there is a new conversion tracking issue. They are now working to resolve the issue. A pat on the back goes to adCenter411 for understanding the issue, the quick reply, and getting the information to the people who can take care of it for us as quickly as possible.
Thanks!!
MSI

MSI and folks,
I've got resolution on the issue brought up my MSI last week (thanks MSI) regarding a discrepancy between conversion numbers in the hourly and daily reports. Conversions are shown in the hourly report if they occur within two hours of the initial click.
If a conversion occurs outside the two hours, it is reported on the daily (weekly, monthly, etc.) report.
What does this mean? Both numbers are correct.
This feature allows you to see which keywords are converting quickly for you, and those which have a longer sales cycle.
So, if you're interested in overall status, the daily/weekly reports are your best bet. If you'd like to see which keywords are actively converting, the hourly report is a good tool.
Remember that only the conversion numbers will be different, all other numbers (clicks, cost, etc) are reported as they occur, and will match between all reports.
I know that during reporting delays, often the hourly report was the only available one. We are hoping to keep all reports current in the future so you'll have all appropriate information at your disposal.
Thanks again for your patience,
adCenter411

UNBELIEVABLE. And you've been telling us to use the hourly reports every time the daily reports have been late? Have you ever told anyone this is how the hourly reports work? What good are they to anyone? I can't belive that only reporting conversions within 2 hours of a click is helpful at all! Is there ANYONE out there who will say this is a benefit? And I still don't believe that your conversion tracking is working well if you can say that a 20 conversion difference can be caused just by time zone and other cookie issues. I never saw these large differences before these last two updates and I don't ever see them on the other engines that I also have time zone and cookie issues with. I find this answer to be unacceptable and symptomatic of all the problems MSN has. You expect me to accept this shoddy reporting as your best effort.....

Does any one agree with me, that they still think they see a problem? Or does everyone else think the stats are good?