They need to overhaul this thing quickly as it just does not do enough and people are going to walk away from it without the ability to see how the traffic is coming... the price estimator tool (their version of the Traffic Tool) is a bit of a joke... there is nowhere that I have found yet that shows your average position... Campaigns are Orders and AdGroups are Campaigns - not too hard to follow but obviously more SE speak to add to the vocabulary...
every time I do a go back etc. it reloads everything from the server...
The Learning Center is dead....
The Keyword Area that has match type (Exact, Phrase and Broad) allows bids for each type... I did not want to break anything so did not put in conflicting bids... may try that on Monday when I have a chance to someone being there to fix....

Overall this gets a thumbs down and will not be getting too much of our cash unless the conversion rates are great... too blind and risky for now.

Plus they have said they are only delivering 25% of search where they have someone advertising direct and the rest goes to Overture until June 06 - think that is a stretch and is more how long they see it taking to gather momentum.... if they do not address the problems of the AdCenter that will be much longer.

Well I believe it was about a year ago when I submitted the first form to be included in announcements and initial offerings for adcenter. I didn't receive even 1 email from MSN. So about 4 months ago I submitted again. Again no info, no announcment. When chater increased on SEW a month or so ago about the impending launch I once again submitted. Again, nothing.

Now I go to try and create an account.

SORRY, by invitation only.

With this kind of poor organization, treatment and negative comments from the likes of Aussie I won't be using MSN until I hear this group singing it's praises.

It must be nice to run a business where you can turn away a client ready to spend a couple hundred K a year with you.

People tend to become like the people they hang out with, and MSN has obviously spent far too much time with Y!.

Hi Discovery,

I know your frustration. It is good to be ahead of the game. Thought you may value some of the information provided to me by our account rep at MSN.

They are currently accepting contracts and placing advertisers on a waiting list by the date received. The first users of AdCenter will be current MSN clients. We pulled out of their CPC program a while back when it wasn't performing but we of course want to be part of the game again. As they are offering complete hand-holding during their beta - they do need to limit the number of clients they bring on board. We were hoping to have our program up before the holiday season however we were told it probably wouldn't be until January or so. I asked how long they expect beta and he wasn't sure, as long as it takes to make sure everything is working for their advertisers properly before they roll-out the self-serve version of the program. During their beta they will be running an A/B test, one site serving from Yahoo and the other from their current clients of AdCenter.

When I submitted the contract, I received a survey from them a week later asking about our spending habits, goals for the program, etc. Although they state they will be going by the list I do think they "may" be prioritizing clients by spend. Which is a very capitalistic thing to do, wouldn't you say?


Hope some of this helps.

T.Mitchell

Thanks T that clears things up a bit.

I guess we are a bit eager to find alternatives to the big two.

I think MSN should have kept their mouths shut until the beta program started, then ramped up the chatter and marketing on the new program.

Driving "excitement" nearly a year before beta starts is only going to get you impatient and slightly frustrated potential customers... instead of excited and appreciative new clients just before you launch.

Time will tell if they can right the ship and meet some pretty high expectations.

Cheers,

Discovery

Yes, I know what you mean, we were disappointed to find out the wait time for the launch of our site in the program. The rep gave me some very good information on the program and I think they will be leading the pack in some areas such as behavioral targeting and geo targeting. They have the use of MSN account demographics to allow advertisers to select gender, age, region, etc. for displaying their ads. We won't be benefiting from geo since we are an e-tailer and sell to all over the US.

I think that as our rep said, they may have taken a while to get into the game just as they have with other things (Windows, Office, etc.) they are confident they will take a chunk of marketshare. I do agree with this, only time will tell.

As for them being an addition to the two biggies, they will be; however if you already participate in the Yahoo Sponsored Search, expect traffic to decrease a great deal since MSN feeds Yahoo currently and will continue to do this until they are out of Beta (expected some time next year). Yahoo numbers down, MSN adCenter up. :D

The less I have to use Y! the better.

Since there is very little targeting and absolutely no ability to exclude sites we spend a great deal of money on clicks from sites we know do not convert.

BTW: Does the beta of MSN have the ability to exclude domains and sub domains?

If so this is a huge win for advertisers. Our profits increase nearly 12% after Google offered this feature.

Thanks again for the info to those of us on the outside.

Discovery

I just wanted to discuss a few of the concenrs mentioned in this thread.

Average CPC / Position: Please take a look in the reporting section - you can get Average CPC / Avg Pos information broken down by order, by ad, by keyword, destination uRL, campaign, or by account (yes, you can have multiple accounts with a single login!). Not only is Avg CPC / Pos available accross all of theses dimensions - it is also available to be aggregated by different granularities of time such as daily, monthly, weekly, yearly, of for all time. You can also select custom date ranges, such as "show me how it performs on all mondays" - or perhaps "month over month", etc. These custom date-ranges work realy nicely with our bid boost feature that lets you increase your bids for different days of the week or times of the day to reflect you true valuations of those times, etc (also the day/week targeting is based on end-user location - so if you target lunch - you will get end-users during their lunch; not arbitrary server time)

Price/Position Estimation: The price/position estimation is being overhauled as we speak. The new solution should provide all of the metrics that you are used to and theoretically should be much more accurrate than competitive offerings (we got a nice piece of research from Microsoft Research here). Overall, we completely recognize the importance of this component but even with the perfect prediction system, it will be difficult to be accurate until volatility of keyword orders slows down (which may not be until after the launch settles down - or at least until we have enough data to reliably predict the pattern). Additionally, the current AdCenter research tool is the only tool that I know of that will also show you the location / demographic breakdown of the search traffic.

Page Reloads / Ajax: All of our grids load asynchronously and are essentially ajax in form - so for the most part you shouldn't be seing page refreshes (although there are still some in there).

Here are few other blog reviews of AdCenter:

http://www.marketingshift.com/2005/10/msn-adcenter-review-complete-with.cfm

http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2005/10/msn-adcenter-beta-preview.html

Cheers!

Welcome Aboard AdCenter.... hope you stay around amid the initial rough times you are going to get as we vent about a system working itself into a new space...
Good luck and we expect to see the same stick-to-it nature that your monolith brings to most projects.

I just wanted to discuss a few of the concenrs mentioned in this thread.


I have a question on your so-perfect-targeting. Let's say I have a campaign and I have this new gender+city targeting in it.

You say:


You can target your order to show ads more frequently to MSN Search users who belong to a specific age group and gender by bidding more for keyword matches which meet your target criteria.


And also:


You can target your order to show ads more frequently during specific days of the week ... for keyword matches which meet your target criteria.


To show ads more frequently, right?

So not "only to the targeted segment" but just - more often. So, let's pretend that I have a campaign targeted to Washington 18-25y old male visitors. How do you get this new targeting? With your MSN Passport.
And how many male 18-25y. old Washington visitors use your MSN Passport? Is it 90%? 10% 1%?
And if it's 1% - so my ads are targeted in 1% visitor range - and in 99% range they go just to every visitor?

How can I get this information? I don't see it in your reports - you have all these columns - but don't have details on this "more frequently" part.
If it's not 100% targeting - I need to know exactly how many ads where targeted, and how many just went by. How?

Our profits increase nearly 12% after Google offered this feature.

Are you speaking of the site exclusion feature of AdWords? If so, I was under the impression that this only applied to content listings. Can you also exclude distribution partners in the Google network for normal paid search with this feature?

Are you speaking of the site exclusion feature of AdWords? If so, I was under the impression that this only applied to content listings. Can you also exclude distribution partners in the Google network for normal paid search with this feature?

As far as I know it is still only available for content which includes the banner/image ads too.

Thanks, thats what I thought. More search engines should start offering this for paid search, especially the smaller ones. We have had success on the smaller outlets when we have been able to...
1) block foreign traffic, and
2) when the smaller outlets themselves have "optimized" our traffic by excluding partners that did not convert.

Had more smaller players (names omitted but we all know who they are) taken this route they wouldn't be doomed to failure as they are right now. Eventually, the advertisers who are spending money on smaller search engines but not calculating ROI will realize that it is -EV to pay for so many useless clicks.

Unfortunately, our rep was clueless about adCenter's features - or more interestingly, why all kw's remained in Pending status.

Relative to AdWords, this product has a L O N G way to go - which is fair enough...Google had a big lead. But if MSN wants to be taken seriously as player, they need to close the gap...fast. To me, this has the feeling of a product rushed to market - perhaps with a solid backend, but a poorly thought-out frontend.

.... To me, this has the feeling of a product rushed to market - perhaps with a solid backend, but a poorly thought-out frontend.


i think this is a big negative and this ain't the first time they are rushing into the market ;)

Unfortunately, our rep was clueless about adCenter's features - or more interestingly, why all kw's remained in Pending status.


I have had a similar experience when contacted by MSN "Experts" on the phone. I am not sure what they took into account when hiring sales reps, but a rudimentary understanding of their own system would go a long way. Not to mention the ability to compare it to the G and YSM operating features. Perhaps MSN needs to spend a little time training its CS and Sales staff, before they scare anyone else that's "in the know" away?

I have had a similar experience when contacted by MSN "Experts" on the phone. I am not sure what they took into account when hiring sales reps, but a rudimentary understanding of their own system would go a long way. Not to mention the ability to compare it to the G and YSM operating features. Perhaps MSN needs to spend a little time training its CS and Sales staff, before they scare anyone else that's "in the know" away?

I've been running into the same issues. I'm actually getting getting better support via the forums (AdCenter) than I am when I call in. I actually had a rep tell me my ad was not displaying becuase they were only going to display 8 ads total and my bid was not high enough to be in the top 8...even though the keyword tool in the MSN account had my average position between 2 & 3. Of course they are displaying more than 8 ads - this was just misinformation.

I'm starting to get the hand of the interface, although I agree, it really needs some work. You really have to dig into the account before you start seeing up-to-date information regarding impressions & clicks.

WebmasterWorld has a feedback thread that msndude started:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum97/663.htm

Yep, and I also asked AdCenter rep if they'd do the same over here plus respond to some of the feedback our members have already given in this thread. If that's what they're after, people have been posting it to them already :)

Yep, and I also asked AdCenter rep if they'd do the same over here plus respond to some of the feedback our members have already given in this thread. If that's what they're after, people have been posting it to them already :)

I told the people handling my account to check out this thread....

I told the people handling my account to check out this thread....

I had a thread running at DP and pointed them to it as well.

Is MSN AdCenter for Internet Explorer only...? I've tried using it with Mozilla 1.7.8 and Firefox 1.5 and couldn't get any further than the lobby screen. Trying to get past there got me pushed back to the login screen...

I had another look with IE 6 and everything worked fine, if a little... basic. Any idea when the Keyword Estimator tool will come online...? I tried with a set of keywords I thought would give traffic/suggestions but repeatedly got "No Data".

Its a nice effort from MSN, but I'd expect a bit more from the worlds largest software developer...!

Hi All,

I wanted to make sure to get answers to all your questions before I posted again. The adCenter team is super excited to see so much feedback! We appreciate all the great suggestions and helpful comments. So let me answer your questions…

Our targeting feature is a cool option that really sets adCenter apart. Our demographic information is culled from Passport registrations. Statistics on MSN’s search audience can be found on the following page: http://advertising.msn.com/msnadcenter/learningcenter/searchaudience.asp

We do offer detailed reports on your targeting stats. Here is a step by step how to.

1. login to your account

2. click on the ‘report’ tab

3. under ‘report group’ choose ‘targeting’

4. under ‘report’ choose either ‘age and gender’ or ‘metro area demographics’

5. choose report range and date and then click the ‘run report’ button…voila!



There’s no difference between targeted ads and all other ads. Ads shown to targeted groups are the same ads shown to all audiences. For more info on targeting check out the following pages:

targeting strategy: http://advertising.msn.com.sg/MSNKeyWords/default.aspx?pageid=252

targeting features: http://advertising.msn.com.sg/MSNKeyWords/default.aspx?pageid=235

We hear your feedback on customer service. This is exactly the type of feedback we’re looking for. It’s our goal to provide awesome customer service to all clients. We’re working to get you the most recent information available, and we are learning new things every day the pilot is live that allows us to work through some of the kinks and learning curves. This is a pilot and we're expecting to have some bumpy spots. But we’re doing our best to smooth everything out for our US launch and we’re extremely hungry for feedback. I will make sure everyone’s comments get to the right department for sure.

Our editorial process is very much a work in progress. A ‘pending’ status means the ad is pending review to make sure it complies with our editorial policy. You can find more info on this policy here: http://advertising.msn.com/msnadcenter/learningcenter/contentguidelines.asp.

Let me address an important point that is sometimes misunderstood. Right now there is a forking method for displaying ads. MSN ads are shown for a small percentage of our customers while Yahoo! ads are shown the rest of the time. Ads will not be a combination of the two sources. The number of ads shown differ for each search query but in general, we usually display no more than 8 ads per page (3 at the top of the page and 5 in the right rail).

Currently only IE is supported in adCenter. We’re evaluating offering cross browser support but it may limit some of the rich application-like functionality that we can offer. The new Keyword Estimator tool is being refined and we’re working to get it out as soon as possible.

We’re definitely listening to your comments and requests. In the coming weeks you will be seeing more of my posts and answers to your questions. We know you’re all on the front lines and have valuable information to share. We’re very excited to become more involved in the forums and we’re looking forward to building a great tool and services. Keep the feedback coming!

Cheers,
adCenter and the MSN adCenter Team

hey,

If you're the same AdCenter from other forums I have already provided you with some feedback, hope it was helpful.

At the top of my list right now are the support issues. The answers I have received from support (after 10 -15 minutes on hold most of the time) have just been flat out wrong. My last conversation (for some reason my login was no longer recognized) ended with the rep telling me that all accounts were down for the rest of the day - try again tomorrow. It was an obvious "get me off the phone" response since it was apparant she was unable to answer my question regarding my invalid login...that had worked no more than 5 minutes earlier.

10 minutes later everything was working again :)

I, and I'm sure other advertisers will be a little more understanding with some of the issues if we feel like supoprt isn't just feeding us a line to get us off the phone. Honest communication will go a long way in garnering advertiser support and loyalty.

We have been monitoring a bunch of forums so yes, we did get your feedback and thank you!

We hear your concerns loud and clear. I wanted to let you know we'll address these issues ASAP. We hope that everyone can understand the growing pains we're working through during the pilot. Know that we're working hard to build a killer tool and excellent customer service.

In yesterday's post I forgot to answer a question about the publisher network. We do have a vision that adCenter will be a “one-stop shop” for advertisers to manage different kinds of ad products, including a way to advertise on publisher's site's with relevant ads like Google's AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network. We don’t have details on any release of this project yet but we will keep you posted as we get more information.

Our targeting feature is a cool option that really sets adCenter apart. Our demographic information is culled from Passport registrations. Statistics on MSN’s search audience can be found on the following page: http://advertising.msn.com/msnadcenter/learningcenter/searchaudience.asp

We do offer detailed reports on your targeting stats. Here is a step by step how to.

1. login to your account
2. click on the ‘report’ tab
3. under ‘report group’ choose ‘targeting’
4. under ‘report’ choose either ‘age and gender’ or ‘metro area demographics’
5. choose report range and date and then click the ‘run report’ button…voila!

There’s no difference between targeted ads and all other ads. Ads shown to targeted groups are the same ads shown to all audiences. For more info on targeting check out the following pages:

targeting strategy: http://advertising.msn.com.sg/MSNKeyWords/default.aspx?pageid=252

targeting features: http://advertising.msn.com.sg/MSNKeyWords/default.aspx?pageid=235
...
Cheers,
adCenter and the MSN adCenter Team

And this gets us not a single step closer.

You confirmed the obvious "Our demographic information is culled from Passport registrations" - but how can I see how many visitors do have their MSN Passport and how many do not in a specific area at a specific time?

I assume that when you have 100% of visitors with 20% of MSN Passports in a specific area/time - your new targeting works bad, because you either:

1) Show my targeted ads only to the 20% of visitors that have MSN Passports - then I miss 80% of audience on that particular campaign - so I need to double each campaign twice, one time with this specific targeting and another - without it (to reach the whole audience).

2) Show my targeted ads to all 100% but then - this feature is bad and useless.

100% of traffic = 1000 visitors
20% have MSN passports(targeting works) = 200 visitors
5% are my targeted visitors (let's say 18y old) = 5% of 200 = 10 visitors

So, among 1000 overall visitors my ads will be shown to the 800 untargeted and 10 targeted ones. Great.

And again - no such numbers in reports. I need the information as following:

Impressions: 1000
Clicks: 50
Targeted Impressions: 200
Targeted Clicks: 20

If you do not target ads by 100% - then you must show parts and targeted/untargeted ads percentage. Will it be done somehow?

Chris Boggs: We hear you loud and clear and we are implementing additional training for the adCenter team.

Vladimiras: I'm working to get an answer to your questions - just want to make sure I have all the right info before posting. I hope to have an answer for you soon.

On a side note, adCenter currently accepts ads only in English and French (in France only). In the future adCenter will accept ads in Spanish.

Thanks again for all of your valuable feedback - I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Vladimiras – Sorry about the delay here. In spite of how long it took me to get back to you, it turns out that we just don’t have that info in our reports. Which, um, you already knew. So I'm taking this down as a feature request, and I'll pass it on to the team.

Everyone - okay so I didn't have a good answer here. Or maybe should I say, I had a disappointing answer here. Either way, keep your questions coming so I can hit one I have a good answer to...

Thanks,
adCenter

... it turns out that we just don’t have that info in our reports. Which, um, you already knew. So I'm taking this down as a feature request, and I'll pass it on to the team.

I think it's not enough.

Take my case above:

100% of traffic = 1000 visitors
20% have MSN passports(targeting works) = 200 visitors
5% are my targeted visitors (let's say 18y old) = 5% of 200 = 10 visitors

Let's say I have a super CTR of 10% on my banner.

Then I will get 10% of 10 visitors = 1 targeted click + 10% of 800 visitors = 80 untargeted clicks = 81 clicks in overall.

But how AdCenter will it show them in your reports? Just: 81 clicks. How should we call that?

Your system lies in reports - that's what I think. Tell me I'm wrong. :)

I'm amazed at the poor support I've received for adCenter so far. I've submitted two different questions, and the responses (or lack thereof) have been laughable.

Question 1: I haven't been able to see my ads. I sent a question to support, and they made some suggestions about my budget being too low. I increased my budget and turned off the daily cap, but still no ads. I e-mailed them back to let them know I still couldn't see my ads (I want to test how well the keyword insertion feature works...truncation, what happens when keyword is too long, etc...before I start writing and deploying ads on a wide scale). The response I got was "your query is still being investigated." It's a week and a half later, and still no answer. I've even sent a couple replies asking for a status update, but no response at all -- not even a "we're still working on it" e-mail.

Question 2: I asked a question about printing out some type of receipt that my company's accounting department will accept for reimbursement, since I'm putting these ads on my personal credit card. Their suggestion was to print out the Billing page (the page with the columns for charges and credits). I wrote back and said that my accounting department would be hopelessly confused by all of these "adjustments" for .05. I just need a receipt that summarizes the total that's been charged to my credit card, and the date it was charged -- which can be printed out easily in both Google and Yahoo. The response from MSN adCenter support? "You could copy your credit card statement." Gee thanks...big help.

I'm amazed. These are questions that shouldn't be difficult to answer. But nobody has responded to my first question, and the response to the second question is about as user-unfriendly as you can get.

We've just launched a free weekly newsletter for adCenter users. Each issue will cover one marketing topic (e.g. keyword research secrets) and one adCenter-feature topic (e.g. using Parameters to personalize ads).

Sign up by going to msn-genius.com.
Cheers,

David

We've just launched a free weekly newsletter for adCenter users. Each issue will cover one marketing topic (e.g. keyword research secrets) and one adCenter-feature topic (e.g. using Parameters to personalize ads).
Cheers,

David

This is some clever marketing....oes anyone know this group? As much as I would love to read the articles I hate to be added to another list.

I really have to agree with the blogs about not being able to view ads :mad:

The customer service is abismal. I called into the help center to ask about why my ads were not being displayed and was told that my set of keywords was not strong enough. Additionally she told me that it may be because my URL's could not be used and that my ad (though approved) didn't make sense. So why am I spending money on this when I can't see what results are being displayed?

I am reaching the point of frustration where I don't think I want to use this program even when it goes live.

I really have to agree with the blogs about not being able to view ads :mad:

The customer service is abismal. I called into the help center to ask about why my ads were not being displayed and was told that my set of keywords was not strong enough. Additionally she told me that it may be because my URL's could not be used and that my ad (though approved) didn't make sense. So why am I spending money on this when I can't see what results are being displayed?

I am reaching the point of frustration where I don't think I want to use this program even when it goes live.

There have been some minor hassles but it is profitable and to ignore it is letting other people make the money

MichaelIW and bigsespend - i'm sorry you are unhappy with adCenter support. i will make sure your feedback gets to the right people on the team so that we can make improvements.

MichaelIW - did you ever get an answer? please let me know, if not i will follow up and get answers for you. you can send me sticky mail if you'd prefer.

bigsespend - i presume you're still not seeing your ads since you just posted yesterday. please send me a sticky mail to confirm it's still a problem and i'll try to help figure out what's going on.

thanks,
adCenter

I have found the support for AdCenter to be good so far. And also, the ROI on these ads has been great in the limited time that I have been live on AdCenter. This was when I had only 2 keywords live and it was easy to manage.

However, the user interface needs a lot of work. I have absolutely no idea how I am supposed to manage thousands of keywords in 100+ ad groups, all with different ads, urls, bids, etc. I feel totally lost now that many more of my listings have been uploaded. It would be great if MSN provided us with an interface similar to Google's, where campaigns are easily organized into ad groups and conversion data is provided right there. It seems like there is no organization to AdCenter and the layout of everything makes no sense. Maybe with more practice I will figure out how to navigate the interface - but as of right now, I am completely lost.

I love the ROI for what they do offer.... it is just not enough right now.... and the interface sucks.

I love the ROI for what they do offer.... it is just not enough right now.... and the interface sucks.
I agree with you and PPC - the interface is painful to use. And without the support of third party bid management tools, managing bids is next to impossible. I've had to do it through my rep via a spreadsheet - not exactly the most efficient means, IMHO. We've been in since the beginning and I am still lost every time I log in.

The ROI is excellent, though. Just give us more traffic and I will be even happier! :)

hey everybody--
if you could tell me some specific things you dislike about the adCenter interface, or some suggestions, i can pass your feedback along to the UI team and see what they think.

thanks,
adCenter

I have gone through this with someone from MSN already.

The id numbers versus naming, the ability to open campaigns and adgroups (using recognised terms), the bid system - go Yahoo not Google here, support and teaching not like the Google system (best of breed)...

and a few other things but am off to happy hour... will post more tomorrow!!!

TGIF

hey everybody--
if you could tell me some specific things you dislike about the adCenter interface, or some suggestions, i can pass your feedback along to the UI team and see what they think.

thanks,
adCenter


Just revamp the whole system to match Google. The hierarchy should go:
accounts->campaigns->orders and should be able to be grouped by such, similar to Google (accounts->campaigns->ad groups).

When you click on an order, the screen should have the following information/functionality... impressions, clicks, CTR%, average position, average cost paid, current bid, conversions, converstion rate and cost per conversion for each term in the order. Also from this screen you should be able to change bids for all terms as well as sort data by date (similar to Google).

Currently, in the only screen where you have the functionality to change bids, the information given is useless in determining bids... negative match, parameter 1, parameter 2, status, etc. Plus why is it that you have to scroll over to even get to the bids? Why does adCenter seem to only use a very small amount of my screen space?

Also, the parameter 1, parameter 2, etc. stuff makes no sense to me for the ads. Again: see how Google displays ads, even with dynamic keyword insertion.

Also, if I hit the back button on my browser, I always get taken to a page which is not the page I was just on. ?????

These are some of the things that have made navigation and account management almost impossible for me due to the large number of term, ads, orders, campaigns, etc that I need to run.

One more thing... I cannot even see my keywords and the bids at the same time on the screen. The keywords column on this screen for some reason is about 5X longer than it needs to be, then the also very long negative match column is given (???) and then the bids are available. Though when I scroll over to change the bids, the keywords have gone too far left and they are off the screen. Compare this with Google and Yahoo! offer for bid management and realize that there is a serious need to overhaul the whole interface. Also, while I can't see the bids and keywords at the same time, there is about 3 inches of blank white space on each side of my screen adjacent to the table.

Also, the parameter 1, parameter 2, etc. stuff makes no sense to me for the ads. Again: see how Google displays ads, even with dynamic keyword insertion.

The parameters works as keyword inserts... I like the parameter 3 which works for the destination url.... it prompted Google to add the option.

The parameters works as keyword inserts... I like the parameter 3 which works for the destination url.... it prompted Google to add the option.

You mean that keyword insert could be used in the destination url? I could see how that could be a good feature for tracking purposes.

I understand how the parameters are used for keyword insertion, my problem is with the display in the interface. For example, here is what I just did in an attempt to figure out what was my display ad for a specific order. I log into my account. I click on an order and my keywords for that group come up, with an ad preview at the bottom. The ad preview is displayed as...

{param2}
actual ad text
{param3}

I can see the ad text but not the title or display url. There is a link to param2 so I click it. I get a pop up window that is blank other than an MSN logo. So that is no help. Then I click on the "Ads" tab above. Same thing... I am given the ad description, but no explanation of the title, destination url or display url - which are given as param1, param2 and param3.

So then I click on the "Keywords" tab. There we are, the parameters are given! But, now the ad to which they refer to is not provided at all. And to make matters worse, when you scroll over to look at the parameters, the keywords which they refer to are well off the screen.

This just seems like there is a huge disconnect in the presentation of information in the interface that forces users to jump around from screen to screen and scroll back and forth trying to mix and match data.

1. The interface is not easy to use. Keep it simple, and ask ppc advertisers what they need to see and what works for their workflow. Many good suggestions on this forum.

2. Reporting. I'd like to see the impressions for each ad, keyword, and order. The cost per click average, conversion information, CTR% and average position in a clear report - I don't need graphics.

I'd also like a report that displays my expenses by day - like Google. I co-op my advertising and I need to know exactly how much I've spent for a particular ad run so that I can tell when the co-op funds have been expended. Easy on Google, and on Overture, I pay in advance so there is no problem spending more than I have collected from my co-op participants.

3. I'd like the ability to turn off ad optimization so that I can test new ads againts existing ads. I'll decide, based on performance, which to keep. Again, like Google.

4. I'd like to know what my competitors are bidding and what their click thru rates are. MSN is like Google and very frustrating. How do I know that my ad isn't performing as well as a competitor? Why do we have to bid blindly?

I'm new to MSN adcenter, so I apologize if the above features are currently available and I've missed them someplace on the interface. :confused:

Thanks
Mike

We need:

1. The ability to produce reports showing the results of time-of-day targeting.

2. An easier mechanism for entering large keyword lists - similar to AdWords' cut-and-paste.

3. The ability to view more lines on-screen. For those of us with high-speed connections and long lists of keywords, orders, etc., we should be able to view hudreds of lines per screen.

hi everyone,
here are a few answers to some questions on this thread. i'm still working on some of the other questions.

Mike307 - re: your second point on jan. 24, you are able to see impressions for each ad, keyword, and order. go to the Reports tab. if you click the Report drop-down you will see options for ad, keyword and order.

re: your next point, expenses by day, you can see this in the reports.
1. go to the Reports tab.
2. for Report Group choose Billing and budget.
3. for Report choose Budget Summary.
4. Select an account.

re: your fourth point, what your competitors are bidding. true, you can't see what they're bidding. but one thing you can do is get an estimate of your position through the price estimation tool.
1. go to the Research tab.
2. click on the Price Estimation tab.
3. use the drop-down to change the match type if you want.
4. type in your keyword and bid.
5. click the estimate button, and you'll see your estimated position.
this is based on the previous month's data.

szetela - you can see time-of-day targeting results in the reports.
1. go to the Reports tab.
2. in the Report Group drop-down, choose Targeting.
3. in the Report drop-down, choose Metro Area Demographics.
4. run the report. You'll see a column called Hour which shows you the info you need.

let me know if this helps.

thanks,
adCenter411

true, you can't see what they're bidding.

Why not? This is clearly a desired feature.

Why not? This is clearly a desired feature.

In case you had not heard even Yahoo is dropping this feature... the Google blackbox method is much more profitable... and according to the engines much more relevant.....

Hi adCenter411,

Can you tell me how to give each keyword its own destination URL? For instance, say we're bidding on the term "coin auction." For internal reporting purposes, the destination URL we'd like to use would be "http://www.mysite.com/?type=msn+coin+auction." I don't see how to do this in AdCenter but surely there's a way...

Thank you,

AJ

I think this will work:

http://www.mysite.com/?type=msn+{keyword}

I think parameter three is the keyword....

The {keyword} tag is different than the three {parameter} tags - see:

http://advertising.msn.com/msnadcenter/learningcenter/usingparameters

Thanks for the help, guys. I guess I hadn't really had time to sit down and figure out what the deal is with the parameters but I understand it now. Clever thinking by MSN but I wish the PPC programs would have a more uniform structure :(.