How is AdCenter going for you?

[scrubs]

Hi,

As I am based in the UK I am yet to use the new system. I am reading good write ups on these forums but interested to hear if people are applying more budget towards MSN after the divorce with Overture? Has it changed users perceptions of MSN search?

I have used a demo at a conference last weekend and was very impressed with the smooth interface and potential tools. I hope this offers genuine competition for AdWords but I expect it to take a while to win people over and win a larger % of the PPC arena.

Look forward to hearing users thoughts. :)

[pranavp]

I've been using it for over 3 months now and I must say, its fairly consistent in performance - we've been getting a solid 5 ad impressions every month!!!!

We've tried everything - recreating campaigns, adding irrelevant kewords for increased traffic, enabling all territories, complaining to the adcenter team... but so far absolutely nothing has worked.

Coming from a large network like MSN, this is sadly the most pathetic PPC network I've ever seen.

[scrubs]

Ah sorry to hear about that pranavp, sounds like you have tried to ramp up traffic one way or another.

Can I ask if you are in quite niche market? Are you having better success from AdWords?

[pranavp]

We're a B2B software provider, but I wouldn't say we're niche from any angle. Adwords does amazingly well for us, even Overture gives us decent impressions. And frankly - we get a lot more traffic from MSN search than we do from adcenter.

In our organization, we've renamed it to 'MSN Sadcenter'!! :D

[scrubs]

LOL, very funny. I will try not mispronounce when speaking to my clients!!

I think the system is still in its evolving stage so I wouldn't expect miracles just yet. When it is launched here I also expect it to be a slow burner. :)

[fulton savage]

The prices are great, less than half of what we pay per click at Google, but the interface sucks completely. I get plagued with javascript errors constantly on all parts of the system.

Clicks are pretty weak. MSN will never reach our monthly budget of less than a thousand dollars, even with none of our competitors on the system yet.

Overall, the adcenter bores me. Little action, crappy UI, no T&A : )

[AmplifyChristian]

I just started setting up some of my clients with adCenter and so far it's been quite cumbersome. And I'm not even talking about performance or anything - I love getting random errors when entering new keywords and losing all of the time I put into setting up an "Order" about 50% of the time :rolleyes:

I dislike having to use IE to access it too. I hope they change that in the future.

Now I'm stuck at a perpetual "Loading... (Orders)" screen. Yipes. First impressions (no pun intended) are everything and, so far, I'm not diggin' it.

[jbgilbert]

People just are not looking for the good in AdCenter!

It is obviously so bad and such a bust, that Mr. Bill is giving up and retiring!

Heck, just a month ago he was constantly bragging about how he needed just 5 more years to oust Google.......lol

Now, back to looking for good in AdCenter...... have found nothing
- interface is awful,
- traffic is basically non-existent,
- impossible to manage multiple accounts since the default time period
shown on the screen can't be changed,
- telephone support is.... well.... still not trained, and
- on and on and on

Their disaster Is a real shame considering they had two other "working" PPC systems to copy from!

[Gianluigi]

Working very well for us.

Sometimes even higher CTR's/Conversions than in Adwords/Y!SM

[danielanaidu]

Working very well for us.

Sometimes even higher CTR's/Conversions than in Adwords/Y!SM

ditto. while geotargetting is much less flexible than google, and the traffic lower, the conversion rate at present is higher.

[CraigM]

We are about to start using in my organization as well. I have found the interface to be rather difficult in finding the information I want. This is annoying to say the least.

Reading the posts about low impressions and conversions doesn't surprise me. Once customers start realizing they have another choice in search, even if it is MSN, they will start using it. Then the conversions will come.

[cellconversion]

I find MSN adcenter's interface very easy too use specially on the keyword match type strategy as compared to the one designed in Google. Though we were possibly one of the first companies here in the Philippines to utilize it .. so far we have problems in actual CTR . I dont know if any of you have actually noticed how conversion is actually tracked but we have not yet received any or nothing has reflected on our metrics.

ON report generation ... it is fairly good but not as good as Google's feature - though some data such as conversion may reflect a day after.

MOst promising I think is the ability to set variables that modifies the adcopy relative to the keywords being searched... i think it is only delimited to 3 for each adcopy but nevertheless useful.

One interesting feature also is its ability to conduct split test for adcopy thought im not sure how the mechanics for this work.

Overall it can be improved and hopefully MSN increases its share in the search market for clicks and impressions improve.

[Pirate Princess]

I like adCenter... Gotta say I LOOOOVE the Targeting capabilities. I definetly prefer it over Yahoo. :D

[scrubs]

Great feedback guys, quite a broad response and looking forward to seeing how it works. I think it will be available over here Aug 06 hopefully.

Pirate Princess - Thank god its better then Yahoo!, from the sounds of it they have distanced themselves as far away from that programme as possible, which is a good thing IMO.

[briodo]

Anyone who says they are getting great click through results from MSN or thinks this is better than Yahoo, either works for MS or is smoking crack. We have seen a steady click decline in traffic from MSN Search compared to last year. This time last year we were spending $300 a week with MSN clicks. Now, we are down to under $200.
CraigM - If you think people will start using MSN Search more and your traffic will then increase......Dude, you are dreaming. MSN only had 16% of the Internet search traffic a year ago. I guarentee it is less now. That's only going to happen if thier search results get better. Currently they suck. They were bad when they were Inktomi's results, but now they are worse. Check out some relavency blogs folks. Heck, just do some side by side comparisons yourself.
I'm very seriously considering closing my MSN adcenter account and putting the money into additional keywords at Google or Yahoo or both. I've been waiting for MSN to get a clue now for 6 months. Still hasn't happened. I'm paying the same amount per click as I am at Yahoo, but getting far fewer clicks. If they want to increase revenue from us, they will need to lower the per click cost. You don't pay Cadillac prices when you are buying a Yugo.

[scrubs]

Lol - funny post briodo. I would like to share my experiences from the system but unfortunatly not able to get hold of until Aug here in UK.

IMO MSN is still an unknown quantity and I am not expecting miracles from this, but it may work well for some niches.

Traffic I guess will be down as the program is going out on its own without the other partners it had with Overture. You'd expect the system to stabalise over the next 6 months, traffic won't be as high as its simply not there.

When Overture came into the market it had the same issue, it was only by simply being there alongside Google it grew in popularity. The public hear PPC and think AdWords and Overture, this time next year it will be AdWords, Overture and Adcentre. I'm sure of it.

[CraigM]

Anyone who says they are getting great click through results from MSN or thinks this is better than Yahoo, either works for MS or is smoking crack. We have seen a steady click decline in traffic from MSN Search compared to last year. This time last year we were spending $300 a week with MSN clicks. Now, we are down to under $200.
CraigM - If you think people will start using MSN Search more and your traffic will then increase......Dude, you are dreaming. MSN only had 16% of the Internet search traffic a year ago. I guarentee it is less now. That's only going to happen if thier search results get better. Currently they suck. They were bad when they were Inktomi's results, but now they are worse. Check out some relavency blogs folks. Heck, just do some side by side comparisons yourself.
I'm very seriously considering closing my MSN adcenter account and putting the money into additional keywords at Google or Yahoo or both. I've been waiting for MSN to get a clue now for 6 months. Still hasn't happened. I'm paying the same amount per click as I am at Yahoo, but getting far fewer clicks. If they want to increase revenue from us, they will need to lower the per click cost. You don't pay Cadillac prices when you are buying a Yugo.


Since I can't tell the future, I can't say for sure if MSN will increase or decrease. I'm willing to give MSN some time (maybe till January) to see if they do indeed produce. I'm not going to put all my advertising eggs in the MSN basket, since I'm getting decent conversions with Google. Right now, I have adcenter's budget very controlled, since it is an expirement for us. I'm hopeful that MSN can perform for us, but only time will tell the real story.

Since Adcenter is fairly new, I'll give it a shot. By the end of the year, I'll know whether or not I'll keep it.

[Discovery]

There is a thread that you can post constructive critisism to at:
Top 10 Adcenter Fixes (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=11751)
Adcenter411 The Adcenter rep reads this area of the forum regularly.

I agree, I was a little disappointed to find that adcenter was not nearly ready for prime time when it was launched and continues to be a bit buggy. Our campaigns, in a very broad market, have received little traffic. With the lack of timestamps and reporting being buggy we have had a hard time analyzing and refining our campaigns to increase traffic.

With that said, the the traffic we have received has produced an excellent conversion rate, both to a lead and to a sale.

No, I don't have any ties to MSN or Adcenter what so ever, but I do have a strong desire to see a third, legitimate engine jump into the PPC game and push the envelope forward.

Over the past 5 months MSN has created an excellent track record of gathering feedback AND ACTUALLY IMPLEMENTING IT. So although I too am with you in suffering through a troublesome interface and lower traffic volumes than desired, we have an open path to make change if we choose to use it. I think we could all benefit by clearly and objectively submitting our ideas and requests to MSN and see if they continue to develop an application that meets our needs.

My number one fix for all engines

Give advertisers total control over where our Ads Display.
Let US, Block Domains, Block IP's, Block Tool bar junkies.

Cheers,

Discovery

[Toure]

Guys,

I am based in the UK and we are just in the process of migrating campaigns accross to MSN. I have been sent the Adcenter upload template and am very suprised the advert character limit is 60 characters only?!

30 in the Headline and then 30 in the '2nd field'?! This seems stupidly short?

Are you guys working with the same character limitations for your adverts?!

[BJC]

I'm still having mixed thoughts on adcenter.

The traffic level is horrible, but CPC is low and that traffic converts fairly well. I like the reports interface/options, but I can't stand waiting until after noon to get stats from the previous day.

I'd love to see a much shorter delay for reporting, and being able to work on adcenter in firefox instead of IE would be great. But until traffic levels increase, I'm not going to spend enough time with it to be too irritated (not even a quarter of the time I spend on my campaigns in google or yahoo).

[adCenter411]

30 in the Headline and then 30 in the '2nd field'?!

Toure,
It's likely that you're looking at the dynamic text parameter fields which both allow for 30 character max. You are allowed 25 character in your Ad Title and 70 characters in your Ad Description. If you still have questions, please feel free to sticky mail me, or contact your account representative.

Thanks,
adCenter411

[MSI]

I finally had to find somewhere to express my displeasure with MSN adCenter. I have been advertising on Google and Yahoo for many years for many clients. I have opened 3 accounts in adCenter over the last two months. I have had nothing but problems. Here is a list:

1.NO BILLING DEPARTMENT!!
How can ANY company run a business with no accounting department for billing questions? They should be able to account for every dime my clients spend at any time the inforamtion is requested. NO ONE at customer service can see anything different than I can as far as accounting goes. I had to tell most of them where you can see any daily adjustments that are acctually being credited.
2.Why aren't words alphbetized on the manage keywords page?
When I add more words to an order they go to the end of the list. When I want to go back and make changes I have to scroll up and down through the list to find the word I want to modify. That makes the optimization process VERY time consuming.
3. Server errors constantly when I try to make multiple changes to multiple orders.
Can I ever get to and from the manage keywords page without getting an error at least 20 times first?
4. Billing reports?
It would be nice if they had something besides budget reports
5. I have to go into each daily invoice to see any Adjustments made to any account.
This goes back to reports, why can't I get one for adjustments, my clients want to know what they are really being charged, adjustments included.
6. Schedule reports? what a joke
I am in CST(USA), I schedule a report for Mondays and I get it SUNDAY night because it is sent on UTC time. It does not include the correct days for the requested report. Their answer to this problem was to send me an e-mail that explained how to convert from my time to UTC time. (two weeks after the original problem was posed to them)
7. rejected words e-mails non-existant
Can they let me know when they take words offline for
ANY reason. I can't afford to search for every word in every account every day to see if they have suddenly removed it for low click through or rejection. You could be running words right now you don't realize have been taken off line. I have hundreds of words in several accounts this is ridiculous.
8. Global issues
why do I have to enter the same excluded words to every new word I add? why can't excluded words be optionally added as Global so I don't have to add them every time. Sure I can use the add multiple excluded words, but if I already have keywords in the order and am adding more keywords it will add a second copy of the excluded words to the old words that were there. I have words that have 3 copies of the SAME excluded words because I am not going to go correct it and I didn't realize they would set a system up not to catch duplicates.
9.CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!! is a joke too
They are expected to answer phones, answer e-mails, and research problems all at the same time and they have NO resources to back them up. Here is how my average customer service problem report goes.... I call them to report a problem. I give the the account info, specific date range involved, and a detailed description of the problem. The rep writes it down and says they will research it. 3 days later I get an e-mail saying they need more info, usually the account info and the date range. I ask why they need this, and never get a good answer since they should already have it. Then ten days after that I get an answer that does not even address the original question (like their UTC conversion answer). I have over 25 outstanding "service numbers" with them that I consider never answered. I have NEVER gotten an answer in less than a week. I have spoken with supervisors who know less about the system than I do already. When I have to teach mutliple reps and supervisors how to run aggregate keyword reports (match types not split out per keyword), when I have to inform them that words are not alphabetized on the manage keywords page, when I hear the phrase "oh, I didn't know that" repeatedly from the representatives that are supposed to teach ME the system, then there is a problem.
The account I manage spends upwards of $3,500/day on MSN ($15,000 on Google, $8,00 on Yahoo). I had 3 on MSN, but two have already dropped them because they are concerned with the billing issues, and the fact that MSN immpressions are so slow compared to Google and Yahoo. There are many more minor issues I have with MSN's interface that I won't go into here. But suffice it to say, they need REAL improvement and they need it fast!

[MSI]

OK, here are a few more....

First I agree with everyone who says the data that shows next to the campign names, order names, and on the keyword performance page is unusable. We need to see stats like "yesterday, last week, this month, last month, etc.". As others have said, Google and Yahoo can do it, why can't you. I find this makes optimizing accounts much easier. I don't have to run all kinds of reports all the time.

I would like an option to add conversion data to EVERY report that I run. I am SOOOOO tired of having to select conv, conv rate, and conv cost every time I run a report. Of course they woud say just schedule it, but I explained that problem in my last post and it is not an option.

What's the deal with e-mails? They send me an e-amil, I click the reply button and the address does not automatically porpigate into the TO: field like it should. I have to copy and paste the address! This is MSN! Can they not be compatable with Outlook 2003? of course I have added them to my address book by now, but I still have to select them every time I reply.

Words rejected for misspelling? I WANT to bid on the misspelling specifically. Why do I have to add them, have them rejected, then appeal the rejection to get them through? Give me a way to tell you I MEAN to misspell these!!

By the way I agree with the person who said your "relevancy standards" are too high. I added a word on a Friday, had it rejected for relevancy on Sat. Added it Monday, it has now become my 3rd best producing keyword.

Another problem I have with customer service is that information is not exchanged between the reps or the reps and supervisors. Simple things that I have been telling them for almost two months now are not generally known by all the reps. For example, within the first week of opening the first account I told them that I was frustrated with the fact that the manage keywords page would not allow me to sort the words alphabetically (or any other way). The fact that that has not been addressed in 8 weeks is bad enough, the fact that in the last two days I have run into reps on the phone that still want to tell me it can be and I have to take the time to show them differently is unfathomable. That information should have been disseminated to all reps by now. And again this is only one example (scheduled reports going out on UTC time would be another example) of things I know I have informed them of that none of the reps ever seem to find out about.

Set regions globally for campiagns and accounts. Why do I have to pick region for each order? That is only asking for erros to occur because people accidentally pick the wrong region for one order or the other. Maybe there is a good reason for this that does not apply to the industries I advertise in, but I never need more than an account wide region setting. It could at least be an option.

An FYI for agencies advertising for multiple advertisers like me. You CAN not run camaigns with the same keywords in the same account or in separate accounts in the same user id and have them show up in the same immpressions like customer service will tell you. To have more than one campaign running on the same keyword and have both campaigns show up in the same immpression you have to have separate USER IDs. I happen to have more than one client in the same industry and only by the hardest trial and error I figured that out for myself. Through the entire process customer service kept telling me..."But they say it should work this way". I would like to run all clients in one user id, but that is immpossible since I have more than one running on the same keywords.

Another FYI, did you know if there is a problem with a declined charge to a credit card that they wait 6 days before they inform you? If a charge is declined they take your listings offline, wait two days and try again, wait four days and try again, THEN they inform you there is a problem. Never telling you they took your account offline, not letting you know for 6 days that it was even declined. I am in these accounts every day so I would catch it, but those who are not...beware. I haven't had this happen, but asked the question because I have had a client's card rejected on other engines when there was a possible theft reported on it. With the lack of a billing department I wondered how I would be informed and this is the answer I got from multiple reps and one supervisor. I also got this answer from the PREMIUM customer service reps too. I want to know IMMEDIATELY the FIRST time it is declined because that means there is a real problem I may need to investigate on MY end. Why would you wait 6 days to let me know?

My last comment is about the fabled PREMIUM customer service. This is a farse too. I asked before I opened an account to become a Premium account. I have multiple high spending, high volume accounts and it seemed like that is what I would need. The quick launch reps agreed, but told me Premium was "full" and that I would have to wait. After a month of QuickLaunch they were so tired of all the questions I demanded answers to that someone got me in contact with Premium. But do you know what they wanted me to do to become premium? I would have had to delete the 3 fulling running campigns I had created and optimized over a month and start from scratch creating them in the Premium area all over again, going back to the bottom and letting these campiagns gain strength again. What? My clients would lose business! Why can't they just assign my current accounts to a premium rep? Then they also wanted to have "on file" an authorized signature for my client's credit card. Why? No reason they just want it "in case" they need it. It will be kept in a "secure file", never used, but it will be safe. Right, all three of my clients said no way immediately. In this day and age of identity theft, of information being lost from inside sources (the vetrans info being taken home by an employee then stolen) why would ANYONE in thier right mind allow a company to keep on file an authorized signture for a credit card that by their own admission they do not need? These same accounts are runnig in QuickLaunch with the same charges on the same cards with no signatures required. I'll also let you all know that while I had a real premium rep on the line I tested them a little. I asked three questions and got the same answers I got from the QuickLaunch reps, "I don't know", "I didn't know that" and, "I'd have to research that more". The questions were: How can I look at daily billing adjustments made to my clients accounts? Words on the Manage Keywords page can not be sorted at all did you know that? What time zone are scheduled reports sent out on? If they can't answer the simple ones, how are they going to be any better on the REAL PROBLEMS that come up. To me that closed the question of wether I ever wanted to be premium before I even told my clients about the signature and having to open new accounts again.

Do I seem frustrated? Can you tell by the length of my dissertaions? I'm glad to see there are others feeling the same way, well not glad we're frustrated, but glad it really isn't just me expecting more from MSN

[JohnMaggio]

Honestly, Its not all that. I have tried to spend alot of money for my keywords, and simply are not getting the click volume. Not even 10% of what I get on Google for the same words. I will say the CTR, and the Conversion is higher, but the volume lacks.

Today is July 20th, and I have been running MSN all month. I signed up for ASK yesterday, and have spent almost as much on ASK in two days as MSN all month. Same keywords, same bids.