Notice of Change to Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions

[B-Double-U]

I received the following e-mail today:

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We're writing to notify you that your Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions are updated. The changes take effect on April 30, 2007.

Some of the key adjustments to your Terms and Conditions include:

Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your advertisements.
Microsoft may display your advertisements on its network of advertising channels operated by the Microsoft network of participating websites and other distribution outlets.
The payment and reporting terms in your adCenter agreement have been clarified to describe your rights.

To review the new Terms and Conditions online, follow these steps:

Sign into adCenter: https://adcenter.microsoft.com/
Click the Advertiser Terms and Conditions link on the footer of the page.
Review the document.

If you do not consent to these revised Terms and Conditions, you may cancel your adCenter program relationship with Microsoft at any time through our Microsoft adCenter support team. Your continued use of the Microsoft adCenter program will be deemed your consent to the new Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions.

Please contact our adCenter support team if you have any additional questions.

Thank you for using Microsoft adCenter.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft adCenter Team
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Does this mean that they are going to now determine what is relevant for the ads rather than my keywords? I am really concerned that they are going to introduce new criteria or metrics into the equation.

Does this also mean that they are treating the ads like content match ads, but also matching on words within the ad and not just the keywords associated with the ad?

-B

[Mike307]

This concerns me too B-Double-U. What else could this mean

Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your advertisements.

Microsoft may display your advertisements on its network of advertising channels operated by the Microsoft network of participating websites and other distribution outlets.

The reason that ppc is popular is because it's extremely targeted advertising - I decide which search terms / ads are working and continue to refine them. I do not want Microsoft to 'use matching criteria other than keyword searches'.

After their update this weekend, I logged in this morning to try to run a keyword performance report. Guess what? It ran, and ran, and ran, and ran - until I cancelled the report. Then I tried again, different date range - same problem. I fail to understand why MSN cannot seem to get something as simple as reporting to work 100% of the time for their advertisers. Since the beta of their new ppc service, the reporting has been far less than functional.

And, to top that off, ads running under the same keywords as those on Google and Overture are consistently more expensive.

I think I'm about done with MSN. It's too bad because I really had high hopes for their service when they broke away from Overture and offered an alternative.