Hi everyone,
Just a reminder that adCenter will be unavailable tomorrow, August 5, from 7 A.M to 9 P.M Pacific Time for a release (more details in this thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=12978)). During this period, your current keywords and ads will continue to run. However, you won't be able to access adCenter to make changes.

Thanks,
adCenter411

Well all... care to chime in on the "new" adcenter?

I'll start.

1) We can now set the date range (kinda) on the campaign, order & keyword screens. BUT, the data is WRONG. The total at the keyword level, does not match the order level or campaign level.

2) The reports don't match the interactive screens!

3) They removed ALL conversion data from the reports! What the heck prompted that?

4) Other than that I see little difference in the system.

Looks like MSN has "upgraded" so that conversion tracking no longer works... again.

Thank you PPC for backing up what I am seeing again!!!! We are not just showing discprepencies now, we are showing zeros again!!!!! Customer service (of ALL levels) doesn't want to admit it again. They don't want to address it as a priority issue because I'm the only one reporting it (supposedly). Are we going to lose another week's worth of data because of this one? Oh, and suddenly the difference between daily and hourly conversion totals have dissappeared.

"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"

Remember this answer? What happened to them only counting conversions within 2 hours of a click. Rules change daily to cover their ongong reporting issues. Suddenly all the old reports have the same totals now for daily AND hourly reports. can you make up your mind so that I can just have some consistent totals to work with...If you get the major conversion issue fixed.

Hello everyone,
A few updates on this thread.
Firstly, we've escalated the conversion discrepency/removal issue and should have news on that shortly.
Regarding the hourly/daily match-up:
A little over a week ago, I posted a response to MSI regarding how we view hourly conversions vs. daily (the whole post was pasted below by MSI). After that post, we received feedback from several users who didn't feel this was the best way to approach the data. We agreed and during this release on Saturday, we synched the hourly roll-ups so all conversions will be reported in that hour. Hopefully, this will be an enhancement for you.
More news on the other items soon.

Best,
adCenter411

That's good adCenter411, but why didn't you tell us in this thread to begin with? It was part of the update. And if you can do that so quickly and easliy when only a few complain, then why has the easy issue of sorting the keywords on the managebids tab not been addressed yet? I know everyone who has to optimize an account is complaining about that and has been for months. Plus you fixed that, but can't seem to get the budget reports right yet either after 2 wks. I wish it would be addressed as fast.

MSI et al.

I can entirely understand your frustration about the lack of information regarding this change. To be honest, though it was an element of the release, it was not announced as one of the major changes.
This particular fix was on the roadmap for a while, and we were able to prioritize it based on feedback that we had received. The developers had been working on those systems for quite awhile, and we're happy they were able to roll out this fix with some of the other changes.
I know it can be frustrating when there are things you're requesting that don't show up in the next release, but it is our sincere goal to make sure that all of the concerns are being addressed, and that strides are made in every release. Some times, features will take longer to develop and change than others, so some items may be rolled out in a shorter time frame. Please don't misconstrue that as us ignoring other, important concerns.
It is our hope to give you up to date information, and to bring greater visibility into the changes being made in the system. We also realize that sometimes we will not be successful, and will continue working to close that gap.

adCenter411

Hey, I finally got some conversion tracking for yesterday, bit it is still WRONG!!!! My back end reports show we got 40 conversions and you all say we had 15. It maybe back on, but it is still not working right. Don't think you can explain away 25 conversions to time zone and cookie issues.........
MSI

MSI,

I may have the answer to your problem. If I'm right, you will not like it but at least it will explain what is happening. Let's see if this is it...

When you put your keywords in they are "broad" only right? So, when looking at the interactive screens you are seeing fewer conversion and only those that happened on "broad" match.

When you generate a report you are seeing conversions from "broad", "phrase" and "exact".

First tell me if this is the case, then I'll try to explain the rest.

JB,
Thanks for the idea, but no, my keywords are not set all to broad match. Back in May and June when conversion tracking was fairly reliable I actually did some optimization on this account. I have words set to the match types that were best performing for them back then. Now when I run reports for yesterday, daily, hourly, account performance, or keyword performance they all say 15 conversions just like the interactive screens. I even tried to tell myself that they fixed it mid day and that is why I am only seeing about half the conversions, but the hourly reports shows that 13 of the conversions came in hour 0 for the day and the other 2 came in hour 1 of the day, so that didn't explain it either. In fact that makes it look even more suspicious because I can't believe that I got 13 of the 40 for the day in the deep dark early morning hours, that would be VERY unusual.....
Thanks again though, any idea is worth checking out!

Oh well.... just so you and others know here is the deal.

If you have a "broad" keyword (no exact or phrase) of say trailer hitches

and the searcher searches for trailer hitches and converts,

the interactive screen won't show a conversion because MSN claims the searcher did an exact search!

Bullhocky... if I only have ONLY the broad term and get a conversion on it they SHOULD put the conversion on MY broad term -- NOT the exact match term NO MATTER WHAT THE SEARCHER DID!

I cannot..... FLAT CANNOT.... make them understand this.

JB,
Weird. I see what you are talking about. I found one word in my account that is only broad match. I did take a conversion on it as "exact match" yesterday. I see the conversion in the reports and included in the totals of the interactive drop down for the campiagn, but it DOES NOT show on the keyword performance page!!!! I COMPLETELY agree with you, this is unacceptable. I was not aware of this problem. Thank you for letting us know about it. I only have two words like that, but it does make a difference when trying to optimize them. I guess the easy solution for this is to bid on the exact terms too, but that again is us fixing their problems and not them making the system work right. I will make sure they hear about this from me too. They keep telling us "the more feedback the better", so I will put my two cents worth in there on this issue too....

My conversion data comes in to Atlas all on exact match, as well. So somehow they are not passing the proper parameter or whatever that tells the tracking systems which match type was actually clicked and converted. This is not the only communication issue between MSN and Atlas, but it's definitely a big one.

Thanks for the info, guys!

Melissa

Hey, I finally got some conversion tracking for yesterday, bit it is still WRONG!!!! My back end reports show we got 40 conversions and you all say we had 15. It maybe back on, but it is still not working right. Don't think you can explain away 25 conversions to time zone and cookie issues.........
MSI


My guess is that conversion tracking was fixed late yesterday afternoon. I would wait until you see tomorrow's report before you are sure that it is still not working properly.

PPC,
If you will look at my second post today you will see why I can't say they got it started yesterday afternoon. The hourly reports show otherwise....of course they could be wrong too.

JB,
I found someone who seemed to understand the issue about Broad match type words not showing the Exact match conversions (and impressions and clicks for that matter) in the interactive totals. I showed them two keywords that are Broad match only and made them run reports to prove it to them. They have given me a service number for this and I will stay on top of them about it (not that that seems to help much :)).

I am pleased with their upgrade and being able to sort according to time periods better. However, I still see major issues.

JB and MSI,

I think that you have answered a problem I am having but it may be a little different. For example, when looking at a campaign for the past month I get a certain number for the number of conversions (40). If I go into the ONLY order in that campaign and view the keyword performance data, I can see almost no conversions in there (2). I run all keywords as broad match. Why don't the numbers match up? I want to make bid adjustments on each keyword but need conversion data to do that. The only way I can get this is by running a silly report and go through that process every single day. This takes up valuable time and seems like a simple fix. Do you suspect this is related to the type of keyword matching, or some other problem?

I explained this to an adCenter rep who told me adamently that the keyword performace data will not match the campaign level data due to the data being calculated at different times. I then told her that all data is from LAST month so the time at which it is compiled shouldn't matter. She refused to give in and told me to "never trust the conversion data at the keyword perfomance level" and to only trust the reports that I unwillingly have to run each time.

So, adcenter411, why do you present us with data that your rep said is completely unreliable?

masterlink2
I think that you have answered a problem I am having but it may be a little different. For example, when looking at a campaign for the past month I get a certain number for the number of conversions (40). If I go into the ONLY order in that campaign and view the keyword performance data, I can see almost no conversions in there (2). I run all keywords as broad match. Why don't the numbers match up?

My explanation is EXACTLY what is causing this problem. Kinda sick ain't it! You have only broad match (have chosen not to use phrase and exact) and MSN maps the conversions to the very types you have chosen not to use....

Masterlink2,
Sounds like the exact same problem to me. You must have taken only 2 broad match conversions and the rest phrase and exact match. I'll be real honest about the reports of ANY kind that you are trying to use conversion data from for the last month...they are not correct ANY of them. July had too many conversion tracking issues off and on to be reliable. They admit to a loss of conversion data for a block of 6 days in July. This month as well so far, I don't consider any conversion tracking since July 1st to be accurate in ANY report.

Just curious and off the important subject of the reporting issues, why don't you all use exact and phrase match bidding? Masterlink2, if you have that many conversions comming from the exact and phrase match why don't you bid on them individually? I find my clients move up in position or I can lower the bids in many instances because I am bidding directly on those match types. I also drop match types that don't convert well and only cost money.

Just curious and off the important subject of the reporting issues, why don't you all use exact and phrase match bidding? Masterlink2, if you have that many conversions comming from the exact and phrase match why don't you bid on them individually? I find my clients move up in position or I can lower the bids in many instances because I am bidding directly on those match types. I also drop match types that don't convert well and only cost money.

The only reason this far is b/c I am just about the only advertiser for these terms that are costing around a quarter. I might be able to save a few cents but don't see a need yet due to the low volume of clicks I am getting right now. As competition increases in this industry I will be forced begin to bid on all match types individually to keep the costs down.

Thank you both for your input (jbgilbert and MSI) and hopefully others will bring this up with the adCenter reps so that maybe this can be rolled into their next update b/c this is important to those of us at agencies who are wanting to move lots of clients into a new source of paid traffic. I know my clients require proof of ROI and Microsoft just is making it too time consuming and difficult to figure out these basic metrics for easy effective management.

Hi everyone,
I have an update on this one of the issues in this thread. As some have reported here, you should now be seeing conversions in your reports. Unfortunately, because of an error that occured during our release on 8/5, conversions weren't tracked from 7am PDT on 8/5/06 until 2:30 PM PDT on 8/10/06. This doesn't mean that you received zero conversions, only that the conversions were not tracked.

As for the discrepancies you're seeing between match types and conversions, I will take that up with the team here to see what's going on.

Masterlink2, I am not sure why a support rep would have said that to you. I will look into that as well.

I'm sorry about this inconvenience, and I will keep you posted as I learn more.

Thanks,
adCenter411

Masterlink2,
I knew it was probably a dumb question, but thought there might be some reason you had that I could learn something from. My words that run only broad match are the same types of words.


FYI, I hear from other contacts that they are trying to address the broad match reporting problems already which is good to hear.

As for the discrepancies you're seeing between match types and conversions, I will take that up with the team here to see what's going on.


adcenter411,
You should already be aware of this -- was discussed with one of your contacts who called me while you were out of town.

As for the discrepancies you're seeing between match types and conversions, I will take that up with the team here to see what's going on.


Do we get the update on this critical issue?

Our development team has isolated this issue and they're working on a fix. Once I have an ETA on the fix, I will let you know.

Thanks,
adCenter411

Adcenter,

Are you absolutely sure you understand the issue at hand? If not, please contact me for the details before they fix the wrong thing.

If you don't still have my contact info, ping me in a sticky.