Microsoft Advertising Community

Education Industry Growth and Search Optimization Best Practices for Microsoft adCenter

Jeremy Lamothe - MSFT — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:01:00 GMT

The education industry has seen rapid traffic growth in the past year due to Bing query share growth and many students and professionals looking to expand their knowledge. Last year, adCenter historical data shows that clicks peaked during the month of May. With similar trends expected in 2010, now is the time to test ad copy, optimize keywords, review match types and update negative keywords to ensure optimal performance and high lead generation for your education-related site.

Testing Ad Copy

Securing budget to test ad copy in advance of a peak seasonality month can result in high click increases, thus giving your site an increased chance of capturing a lead. Consider testing dynamic (also known as "param") ad copy, especially for ad titles and descriptions. For those of you unfamiliar with how parameter keyword insertion works, I highly recommend checking out Kim Farmar's post on dynamic ad copy. In recent months, several education advertisers have seen success using a mix of 'TM" symbol, "official site" and "degree" and dynamic ad copy in the ad title. Microsoft adCenter's ad title character limit is currently 25, while ad description is 70 characters. Testing call-to-actions including "courses", "classes", "degree", "online", "accredited", "apply" or any combination of these words can help to increase CTR. Typically, it is best to run a test that will result in at least 1,000 impressions per ad and run only 2-3 ads per ad group. This enables you to have sufficient data to make an educated data-driven decision if the test ad copy is worth expanding to other ad groups within your account.

Optimizing Keywords

While the user sees your ad before deciding to click to your site, keywords act as the bridge between the user's query and Bing showing the most relevant ad. Choosing and categorizing keywords correctly will help with performance, typically resulting in increased lead generation.

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence is great for building out and categorizing keyword lists. I have mentioned it in many posts because it contains a powerful toolset and let's face it, keyword expansions can be heavily time consuming. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence helps to eliminate these problems and provide you with insights into what match types and positions perform best per keyword.

Demos and training for the tool can be found by clicking the links above. Bidding on brand, programs, degree types, class names will help to extend your reach and impression impressions.

When you are ready to upload, you can use the adCenter Desktop (tutorials listed at bottom of page) to load your keywords into adCenter. I highly recommend testing out the new version of the adCenter Desktop as it is much faster and more stable than previous versions. I also highly recommend limiting ad groups to 20 keywords (increases keyword-ad relevancy) and utilizing normalization best practices.

Review Match Types

Think of match types as the road on the bridge between keywords and ads. Different match types do different things and you some match types perform better than others, depending on the keyword. Detailed match types and best practices can be found in Hana Ondrusek's post, Understanding How Match Types Affect Your PPC Campaigns in adCenter. Using exact match on single word keywords such as "degrees" is recommended; words like "degree" can match to a variety of different longer tail keywords. Bidding across all match types and utilizing keyword negatives typically results in greater keyword efficiency. The aforementioned Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can help you to bid accurately per desired match type and position. The education vertical is becoming more competitive by the day and with more and more focus on education, it is best to update negatives frequently.

Update Negatives

Using negatives to improve performance (including match types) is a well-known best practice. Paying more for unqualified traffic is not efficient and if you have tight budgets, it makes a greater difference. Negatives specific to education that you can leverage for your campaigns include "graduation", "high school", "elementary school" and "junior high school". Adding negatives specific to your brand, programs and type of degrees will help to eliminate unqualified traffic, ensuring your ad shows for "bachelor degree", but not "bachelor party".

Besides testing ad copy, optimizing keywords, reviewing match types and updating negatives, it is important that you allocate the appropriate budget based on the desired volume and keyword bids. If you are bidding $10 per keyword and only have a campaign budget of $500, chances are, several keywords will not show.

What best practices do you use when optimizing education campaigns?

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The Rise of Rich TV

Mark Kroese - MSFT — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:00:00 GMT

Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine. -Robert C. Gallagher

Gallagher's famous quip rings true in many aspects of my life - career, children, and climate change to name a few - but none more noticeable than the TV viewing experience. The new world of TV is changing - and fragmenting - so quickly that I am starting to think that the days of a "typical" TV experience are gone forever.

In the swirl of all of this change, there is no shortage of prognosticators on the topic of where TV may be going, myself included. In fact, there are entire conferences devoted to the subject and ad industry publications create in-depth reports on it. There are almost as many points of view on what TV 2.0 will look like as there are cable channels to choose from - with more launching every day. Yet, as I sift through the plethora of opinions on the subject, some common threads emerge. When these threads are stitched together, the result will be a consumer experience I like to call Rich TV.

Rich TV is being defined at the juncture of TV as we know it, and TV as we want it to be. Rich TV, and the advertising experience that goes with it, has five key attributes - let's call them 'transformers' - which are clear breaks from TV as we know it. The five transformers are:

1. On my schedule: On demand and time shifted content is a significant trend that is happening today, particularly in the coveted 18-49 demographic, and will continue to explode as consumers get used to ordering up their content when they want it. Like our kids who expect to be able to "pause" all types of media, soon the notion of "TV by appointment" will feel as antiquated as the cassette tape. The meteoric rise of Hulu is the best example of the idea that all content is automatically "DVR'd" and waiting for us to tune in when we please.

2. On my screens: Historically, we associated specific content types with specific screens: The MP3 player was the music screen. The phone was the voice screen. Xbox (on a TV) was the game screen. The PC was the website screen. And so on. But these content types are rapidly becoming device agnostic. Music, movies, sitcoms, games and web content are increasingly able to "free flow" across multiple screens. For example, the Zune service serves up music and high definition video on the PC, the TV (as an Xbox "app") and the Zune device itself. One service, three screens. The Netflix service works the same way: you can watch streaming movies on your PC, your TV (again, via the Xbox) and update your queue on your mobile phone. These services, and others like them, are creating an expectation of Free Flow of media across multiple screens. TV content is no exception.

3. Opt-In Interactivity: This attribute is at the core of Rich TV. Television as we know it is linear-there is no interactivity. With Xbox, we are able to offer a more engaging and interactive experience - last year's KIA campaign that ran on Xbox LIVE is a great example. The Kia campaign follows the "Invite, Don't Interrupt" principle of interactive advertising. As a result, the user engages deeply with the campaign creative. Xbox users who chose to interact with the Kia creative on Xbox LIVE spent an average of 298 seconds (essentially five minutes) exploring Kia advertising content. This high level of interactivity translates into real brand lifts for advertisers. In short, interactivity equals engagement.

4. Rich Targeting: Today, most advertisers buy "content association." Associating with a specific type of content is good, but still falls short of marketing nirvana. The addition of rich targeting is a critical ingredient of Rich TV. The more the advertiser knows about the audience, the more surgically the audience can be targeted. This means targeting by age, gender, day part, geography and behavioral attributes. Because Xbox LIVE gamer tags are based on the Windows Live ID system, all of the richness associated with a Live ID can be applied to the media buy. With Rich TV, the old adage, "Fifty percent of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, if I only knew which fifty percent." will be a thing of the past.

5. Measurable: So you spent a bunch of your marketing budget on a TV campaign. Now what? Did the campaign move the needle? With Rich TV, there will be no ambiguity. You'll know who saw your ad, who clicked on it, what content they viewed, how to continue to engage with them, and how all of this translates to sales or awareness gains. Today's CMO is under increasing pressure to deliver ROI. For better or worse, Rich TV will expose the strengths and weaknesses of each TV campaign. We recently re-plumbed the Xbox system to be measured by Neilson. While this is a significant milestone on the path to Rich TV, expect the entire science of TV measurement to change radically in the next five years.

These five transformers will result in a world of on-demand, multi-screen, interactive, targeted and measurable advertising. We're not there yet, but we're not far off, either. We're close enough that I will go out on a limb and say that Rich TV (and Rich Advertising) is now inevitable. Will these five transformers be the defining attributes of Rich TV? The only way to really know is to do what the networks have been telling us to do for years: stay tuned.

The New MSN – Microsoft’s Bob Visse Explains the Why for Advertisers

Jenny Leahy - MSFT — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:00:00 GMT

On March 9 the new US MSN homepage made its debut offering search, news, local, and social networking – all in one place.

I recently sat down with Bob Visse, General Manager of MSN Product Management, to capture his thoughts on the new, clean look of the MSN homepage, the new features and functionality, and what this means for advertisers.

I learned that Bob and his team have captured over 70,000 pieces of customer feedback since the preview of the new MSN homepage started in November. With this feedback top of mind the MSN homepage features 30 new updates – take a quick tour of the updates.

Some of the features and focus areas you’ll find on the new MSN homepage include:

Bing, Bing, and more Bing – The search bar is more prominent, you’ll now see a new trend watch on the homepage that highlights the trending on Twitter, and you’ll also see an increased prominence on popular searches.

The emergence of five key sections news, entertainment, lifestyle, sports, and money – These vertical sections are important for brand advertisers. These sections become one of the key places for advertisers to buy the audience and environments where they want to test brand campaigns – it is in these areas where brands can break through. The homepage also offers brand advertisers a new opportunity to capture the attention of their audience with an uncluttered homepage, big brands won’t compete with the content on the page as their ads pop.

A local content section that has a growing audience – In the few months that the preview of the homepage was live, the local section grew to 5 million unique users, who were accessing the local information that covers over 42,000 zip codes, and who were personalizing up to 3 cities to follow.

News and images in a tabbed format allows for multiple highlights with less clutter on the page.

Social networking is now featured too. Now you can check your favorite social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live, right from your MSN homepage.

Take a minute to watch Bob’s thoughts and let us know what you think.

Cheers

Jenny

ISA that Time of the Year: UK Financial Reforms and What They Mean for Your SEM Campaigns

Gabe Ingalls - MSFT — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:35:00 GMT

It's that time of year again when it seems that almost everyone is talking about Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) and the various ways to get the most out of them. Indeed, April 6^th 2010 heralds the start of the new tax year here in the UK, and with it comes a whole new set of rules governing the amount of tax-free savings that can be made. In this blog post, we will cover the main changes that have occurred and will offer our views on how to leverage them for maximum impact on your search campaigns.

What is an ISA?

So, to start with the basics - what is an ISA? An Individual Savings Account is a government initiative to encourage people to save in a tax-efficient manner. Any UK taxpayer will ordinarily see at least 20% of interest earned on any lump sum kept in a regular bank, building society or unit trust account (more for those in higher tax bands) head the way of the taxman. This does not apply to ISAs, and as such the benefits of having one are fairly obvious.

ISAs are a very seasonal product, traditionally peaking between January and May every year. This is a direct result of their product lifecycle which can be updated with additional funds at the start of every tax year. This pattern is quite noticeable in the graph below; there are peaks in April in both 2008 and 2009 which highlight the traditional seasonality of the ISA products.

New Legislation for the 2010 Tax Year

The most notable development for the upcoming financial year is the increase to the amount that can be saved. In his last budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling unveiled new allowances taking the annual limit from £7,200 to £10,200, of which up to £5,100 can be saved in the form of cash. This came in to being in October 2009 for the over-50's and has already resulted in some impressive statistics, with recent figures suggesting that almost half of ISA savers over 50 have extended their allowances.

As a result of these reforms, the nominal traffic pattern for ISA products has changed in the past year; with the new legislation, there have been shifts in search patterns which are outside normal seasonality. In particular, in October 2009 there was a peak (a 181% increase Year on Year using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence) that was the direct result of the increase in ISA allowances and was outside traditional seasonality. Looking forward to the April timeframe, it will be important to consider potential increases in traffic when setting campaign budgets for the seasonal uplift.

Monthly Traffic from Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

ISA Opportunities

With the new limit soon to be available to anyone over 18, there are understandably a lot of positive murmurings around the impact that ISAs will have - not only for individual savers, but also for the economy as a whole. Bearing all this in mind, the opportunity for advertisers will be considerable in the coming weeks and months as we are expecting increased traffic to ISA products.

Bing is already receiving more traffic in 2010 than in previous years (a 156% increase in JAN-FEB when compared to 2009 using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence) and this should continue through April and May. Many banks have not yet released the rates for their new products and consequently much of the search traffic should fall in April and May. Much of the Bing search traffic for these products is received during weekdays from an evenly split gender ratio. There is also a slight bias towards the older age groups (see below).

Demographics and Daily Traffic from Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

On a final note, it's worth bearing in mind that this year the Easter break coincides directly with the start of the new tax year - with Easter Monday falling on 5^th April 2010. Therefore it will be more important than ever to have ISA applications submitted in advance of this deadline, preferably by the 1^st April 2010, meaning that search campaigns will also have to be prepared earlier than normal.

Gabe Ingalls & Chris Francis

From SXSW: How can advertising pros learn about evolving digital platforms?

Chris Norred - MSFT — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:09:48 GMT

On Monday, I went to the South by Southwest panel -- How Does an Advertising Pro Adapt to New Communication Techniques?

I had been looking forward to this session.

One of the presenters, Damon Brewster, had written an interesting blog post about why he feels the SXSW conference is important for advertisers, in a way comparable to the advertising industry extravaganza in Cannes, http://www.boardsmag.com/community/blogs/input/index.php?p=844.

The deep immersion in cutting edge technology is important for advertisers trying to understand the quickly emerging new technologies in online digital advertising and their potential effects on business.

Also presenting was Luke Sullivan, the well known author of Hey Whipple Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Advertising.

Most of the conversations for marketers during the first 3 days of SXSW focused intently on social media. Other advertising related discussions were focused on the needs of publishers and Web developer entrepreneurs.

Damon and Luke on Monday spoke right to advertisers from traditional disciplines trying to understand the changing landscape and how the fast changing digital communication platforms should fit into integrated campaigns. There was a packed audience.

For advertisers trying to stay ahead of the curve with online digital advertising and their potential effects on business, the best solution is to dive in. Attend a conference like SXSW. Get the digital media tools and start creating. That was the crux of the message.

“I was born in 1954 when stamps cost 3 cents... I’m a digital immigrant,” Luke said. “Yes the world has changed. I grew up cutting teeth on print. I got good, they said try TV. Now I’m in a world where Facebook has more people than Japan.”

The fundamentals of advertising don’t change, he said. “We’re all really creative. Guys like me have to learn the technology. But the fundamentals of creativity will not change. We tell stories.”

The presenters turned the session over to the audience members who stood to offer their wisdom of the crowd:

Don’t be afraid to bring your developers into the ideation process.
Get into paid search. (I’m not making that up of course.) Add search into the mix of your creative. “It’s really one of the strongest possible ways you can go from what you’re doing now to really translate into the user experience on the web.”
Communicate that in a digital world, people are not necessarily buying inventory, they’re buying audiences.
Understand that online advertising is part of a cultural revolution.

Below: Luke Sullivan, author of Hey Whipple, summarizes the session at SXSW and ads a fun pitch. Thanks.

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MSN Video Player – Interview with Microsoft UK’s Ashley Highfield

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:58:17 GMT

Last week, MSN UK announced the official launch of the MSN Video Player.

In the 2nd in a series of interviews with Ashley Highfield, Microsoft UK’s MD & VP of our Consumer & Online division, he talks about the premise behind the new video experience, why it’s different and what it means for advertisers.

Some of the features include:

- HD with Silverlight Smooth Streaming - users will be able to watch video at the highest quality their broadband capability will allow – this can be right up to 720p HD. Smooth Streaming leads to less buffering and enhances the viewing experience

- Personalised Playlist - users can be created and queued to automatically play

- Social media integration - users can point friends and followers to MSN Video Player videos via Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, MySpace, Digg and other social media tools

Expect to find titles such as: Skins, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Embarrassing Bodies, Waterloo Road, Doc Martin, Secret Millionaire, Wife Swap, Faking It, Bad Girls, Footballers’ Wives and Kingdom.

Do watch Ashley’s thoughts on the new Bing TV Ad in the UK too and check back soon for more insight.

Cheers

Mel

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SES New York 2010 – Hear Microsoft Speakers on Bing & adCenter

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:21:00 GMT

Just a week to go until Search Engine Strategies in New York! The conference looks like being one of the best yet with keynote speeches by David Meerman Scott, Google’s Avinash Kaushik and our very own Yusuf Mehdi . Yigal Elnekave , Robyn Raybould and myself will be speaking and moderating a variety of sessions on paid search and adCenter, and throwing some social media tips and best practice into the mix as well. Stefan Weitz and other folks from the Bing team will be out in force too talking...(read more)

The future of mapping panel from South By Southwest

Chris Norred - MSFT — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:19:00 GMT

Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton, the technical evangelist for Bing Maps, led a fascinating panel at South By Southwest on Sunday morning with map experts from Foursquare, Twitter, Navtec and Flickr talking about the future of mapping.

The panelists discussed their anticipated future at which online maps are overlaid with more and more data: personal history of places you’ve been, social history of places your friends have been, and cultural history data of locations. Maps will include more detailed data on interior locations, and more visual data not only of photographs but videos.

The interesting development in mapping is what people are putting on the maps via social platforms, according to panel participant Laura Diaz of Navteq. More interesting scenarios will begin to emerge when we have indoor maps and people with mobile devices can begin to let others know what shop they are near within a mall, or what floor they are on within a high-rise building.

Dennis Crowley of Foursquare said his company is trying to get more and more specific on location.”Last year at SXSW, for Foursquare it was all about checking into convention center. That’s not really valuable. From our perspective, to check in at (a particular store) is more valuable than to just check in at the mall.” The goal, Crowley said, is more specificity of location, allowing friends to check in within a crowded conference hall, for example, and display their location near a wall or in the back of the hall.

Going forward, maps will become more and more visual, Kellen Elliott-MCCrea of Flickr predicted. “The parts that have really worked are about making it visual"

Today, maps are overlaid with photos. soon, maps with videos of the locations will be available.

The future of mapping is so dynamic, Chris observed, that users expect maps to be changing all the time.

Diaz agreed: “At any given time, a map means something different to you, depending on what you’re trying to do at that particular moment.”

Ryan Sarver of Twitter said that he looks forward to the time when expensive databases that are often necessary for new mapping applications is cheaper or broadly available enough for more and more competitors to create new, more fascinating applications.

South By Southwest keynote on privacy and publicity by Microsoft researcher danah boyd

Chris Norred - MSFT — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:32:09 GMT

Some of the things we’re doing with social media, sometimes in pursuit of profit, and sometimes in pursuit of more altruistic efforts to improve online community, can have some significant and unexpected consequences for users in terms of privacy expectations.

That point was driven home by danah boyd of Microsoft Research in her keynote presentation for South By Southwest interactive on Saturday.

I’ll post the video link for danah’s talk when it’s published. To my ear, the key point in her presentation was that we all need to ask users before we make changes to the expected level of privacy or publicity afforded to users online when engaging with our Web sites, software, services. In some cases, the legal lines are not as important as the user expectations. The compelling point being that if Web publishers, social media creators and businesses only follow the law with regard to what is public information, we become a paparazzi culture.

“When we take something that is public and make it more public, we’re basically arguing for the right to sic paparazzi on everyone,” danah told the packed convention center audience. “How will the people whose content is being made more public feel?”

danah talked at length about some of the recent public controversies over privacy information in Google Buzz and Facebook privacy settings. She discussed her research in which she encounters many people who don’t have the power and understanding of social media. Technology elites should not expect those who are less powerful in society to defend their own privacy. Making changes to the level of privacy expectation in a social media technology is especially sensitive. Users can quickly get the feeling they don’t have control. “When people feel they don’t have control over their environment, then they scream Privacy Fail.”

Just because people put something on a public network does not mean they intend for it to be public or to be aggregated. There are many public environments in which people share information with the expectation that it won’t be public. An intimate table at a neighborhood cafe, for example, comes with an expectation that your conversation won’t be overheard or repeated to someone who doesn’t even live in the neighborhood.

Online environments are less predictable and therefore require more care when the creators of social networks are changing privacy behaviors. “People are not good at managing when a system changes the rules on them.”

danah mentioned a case study of a teenage girl whose mother was a domestic violence victim. The girl and her mother were trying to keep their whereabouts private from the girl’s father. the girl joined a popular social network with the belief that her information was private. But when the network changed its rules, she inadvertently made her information public.

“You need to know, there is no easy formula for privacy and publicity. You have to invite users to help you work it out.”

SXSW Panel: Is App-vertising the Answer?

Hung Truong - MSFT — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:25:00 GMT

I am in Austin, Texas at the SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festival this weekend attending panels and moderating one of my own. I had a chance to sit in at a panel about “App-vertising.” The premise of the panel was the large and increasing amount of money spent (and revenue gained) on mobile applications and their means of monetization. The panel consisted of Alexander Muse from Big in Japan, Allison Mooney from MobileBehavior, Garrick Schmitt from Razorfish, Sean Galligan from Flurry...(read more)

South By Southwest: Problogger Darren Rowse discusses upcoming edition of popular book for blog publishers

Chris Norred - MSFT — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:37:59 GMT

Writers who are starting out to earn a living by publishing a blog today often include merchandising as a key part of their monetization plans and count less on contextual advertising than even 2 years ago.

Darren Rowse, the successful Australian blogger who publishes Problogger.net and the co-author with Chris Garrett of the book, ProBlogger, Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income, talked Friday about the upcoming re-release of his book and the changes in the industry since it was released in 2008.

Social media is more important as a promotion vehicle and as a monetization mechanism, Darren told the audience at South By Southwest in Austin. In addition to Problogger.net, Darren runs two sites, Digital Photography School and TwiTip – Twitter Tips

He and Garrett published their book in 2008 - mostly because they had written a lot about how to make money blogging. “Blogging about blogging is a little bit sad” Rowse joked. “We’d written a lot, but still had people coming asking how do you do it.”

The new edition of the book coming out next month will cover social media in depth and will add a case study based on the successful strategies Rowse used to build Digital Photography School into a business.

The first 2 years when he started Digital Photography School were spent building content. During that time, he learned the value of the most basic, beginner level content for a site. An article “how to hold a digital camera” which he was almost too embarassed to publish because it seemed to simple, turned out to be one of his most successful pieces.

Publishing tips:

Quantity of content – It’s about quality AND it is about quantity. Instead of 1 post a week, if you write 2 posts a day, at the end of a year, you will have 700 pages that searchers can find, and your community can share.
Promotion – Use all of the Web sites available to promote your content, don’t expect it to be found. “I promoted my content with 2 questions in mind: Who is the reader I want? Where are they gathering already? Rowse then started to participate in existing photography communities and established his credibility.
Building Community, and using the community to create content. Rowse started “Reader Workshops” in which his readers were asked to help with a Selected question. The content from those has become more popular than some of his blog content. The community also takes ownership and helps with such things as acquiring sponsors and advertisers.
Provide e-mail subscriptions. Rowse said his e-mail subscriptions are 3 times more popular than RSS subscriptions and in the book he covers how the emails are used to monetize his site.
Today, Rowse combines ad networks with direct advertising sales, affiliate commissions, merchandising, and with premium content such as e-books – his own and some for others – which provide a high profit margin.

A lot of things he tried when growing his blog into a publishing business did not work. “My philosophy is try as many things as you can, then build on what works.”

SXSW Presentation: Awkward Family Photos monetizing cheery “awkwardness”

Chris Norred - MSFT — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:04:00 GMT

200 people a day from around the world now add their awkward family photos to the Web site started by Mike Bender and Doug Chenack, www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Mike and Doug talked about the past year since they hit on the idea during a visit home and saw their Web site turn into an overnight, viral sensation. Today, they’re drawing 100,000 unique users daily and 15 million impressions a month and turning the photo blog into a profit machine with on-site advertising, movie tie-ins, merchandising and a soon-to-be-published book.

I’m at South By Southwest this week and it’s a nonstop showcase for Web publishers who've turned great ideas into good businesses, mostly using advertising as an element.

Awkward Family Photos started last spring when Mike got the idea during a visit with his dad and the two friends started scouring the Internet to see if it might be fodder for a successful photo blog. They found 10 family photos in a little searching that captured the idea of “awkward” and the site was born.

A friend at a radio station posted a link to their site, and within a week, they were shocked to have a million impressions, phone calls requesting interviews from national TV and magazines, photo submissions pouring in from around the world, offers for business deals from rock bands, greeting card companies and book publishers.

The key, they said, is the awkwardness. “We wanted to encourage people to give us their private family photos. We both loved the word awkward. There’s no negative connotation. Everyone has had an awkward moment and we’re awkward people.”

Financial Services in 2010: Credit Cards - Trends and Seasonality

Sean Cohen - MSFT — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:26:00 GMT

Credit Card debt had a large impact on the breakdown of the economy and causing many Americans into bankruptcy. Because of this, major reform hit credit card in February passed down from the government. Most consumers see this as change for the better, while banks and lenders are expecting huge financial losses due the impact from these changes. 2010 will be a rocky period for credit cards, with a lot of media exposure pushing research search traffic due to the credit reform thus making successful marketing harder to accomplish. On the bright side, the end of 2009 ended very positively for credit cards, clicks were rising while average CPCs continued to stay low as many smaller advertisers stayed away. For 2010 stay focused on driving highly qualified traffic through proper ad copy and keyword coverage.

Falling CPCs in 2009

CPCs fell throughout 2009, lower than any time in 2008. The economy was the biggest driver of this trend and this also impacted impressions as they dropped off by mid April. On the flip side clicks started improving in late 2009 due to the increase in people looking to save money through rewards program. This helped bring a positive trend into 2010. Reward/Loyalty terms such as "rewards", "gift cards", and "cash back" all saw major click gains the second half of 2009. Alternatively the term "credit" saw major impression drops from the first half of the year to the second, dropping millions of impressions due to all the impact from the credit card fall out. Make sure to leverage this increase in reward keywords in 2010 as people are looking for ways to save money. Other than keywords, driving top positions is key to success in 2010. Outside of position 1, clicks and performance fall off significantly. Over 80% of clicks for the top 10 credit card keywords are served at position 1, though the costs are severely higher. Max bids increase significantly as positions increase, sidebar bids average around $1.00 while mainline ads range from $4.00-$6.00. Fighting for positions in the credit card verticals requires a high max bid threshold.

Hitting the Target Demographic

Ad copy is just as important as position in the credit card vertical as advertisers with high brand recognition drive performance. A combination of using "Official" and a trademark in the title creates significant lifts in CTR. Both these qualifiers in the title push brand recognition when competing against lead aggregators and small credit card resources. Using keyword insertion also leads to improved CTR, by increasing the relevancy of an ad. When pushing keyword insertion make sure to leverage branding in the body of the ad copy. The demographics on the credit card vertical is not that much different than financial services as a whole. Top searchers for credit cards are females 35-49, with click spikes for females in the 18-24 age group and the 25-34 age group. In the older demographic of 65+ traffic drops significantly. Demo-targeting opportunities exist to help lower cost and improve ROI by removing the older and younger demographics from high volume high CPC keywords.

Credit Card Reform

The Credit CARD Act went into effect on February 22^nd 2010. There were many sweeping changes to credit card rules and regulation. These changes affect both the consumer and the credit card companies. Here are a few highlights from the bill:

. No retroactive interest rate increases on existing card balances. Credit card issuers can't interest rates for the ensuing 12 months after an account is opened. If your rate does go up after 12 months, it will apply only to new charges, not an existing balance.

. Consumers now have the right to opt out of -- or reject -- certain significant changes in terms on their accounts

. Credit card issuers will be banned from issuing credit cards to anyone under 21, unless they have adult co-signers on the accounts or can show proof they have enough income to repay the card debt.

. Credit card issuers would have to give card account holders "a reasonable amount of time" to make payments on monthly bills. That means payments would be due at least 21 days after they are mailed or delivered.

Microsoft Advertising at South By Southwest interactive in Austin

Chris Norred - MSFT — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:16:00 GMT

I’ll be in Austin on Friday for the South By Southwest Interactive conference. It’s my first time at the conference but Microsoft has a great presence at SXSW again this year.

Microsoft’s own danah boyd, an expert in social networking research, will be the opening keynote speaker on Saturday.

Chris Pendleton of Bing Maps will present a panel on Augmenting Maps with Reality on Sunday. Bing Maps has a lot of great new features and you’ll want to see how these are being used.

I also found out that one of our program managers from the adCenter group, a recent graduate, will be presenting at SXSW about student entrepreneurship. Hung Truoung submitted his panel idea, “Student Startups” and was selected for SXSW. It’s an example of the bright talent we have coming on.

Other Microsoft activities at SXSW:

Saturday

Bing sponsored TWiST party (“This Week in Startup” or TWiST is an internet radio show hosted by Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and TechCrunch) 3-7 p.m.

Sunday

Bing Blogger’s Lounge Tweetup (attended by tier-one bloggers with disproportionate voices in social media). 4-6 p.m.

Salute to Our Troops -- Microsoft and SXSW will host wounded Warriors and their guests from the Warrior and Family Support Center at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) to participate in a day long trip to SXSW.

Monday

BizSpark Accelerator -- Accelerator is a tech startup pitch event that will showcase 4 startups in each of 5 categories. Pitches will be to an open audience and panel of expert judges

Tuesday

Deep Focus sponsored session “Microsoft Bing: Behind the Scenes of The Decision Engine” (Aaron Lilly, Microsoft, Lynn Girotto, Bing/Microsoft; Stefan Weitz, Bing/Microsoft)

The Future of the Digital Living Room – Ron Pessner of Xbox will discuss how interactive entertainment can be.

BizSpark Accelerator continued.

Ongoing

Bing Photo for Good (located in Blogger’s Lounge. Operated during Lounge hours). Each photo taken in Bing booth goes towards “Save the Children” efforts on behalf of children in Haiti; Checkin4Charity partnership.

Bing booth in Expo Hall (operated during Expo Hall hours)

Microsoft Silverlight Interactive Lounge -- highlighting Silverlight by turning the space into a digital living room showcasing multiple technologies outside the panel rooms.

Windows Phone Blogger Lounge

OMMA Global 2010 San Francisco – Microsoft Speaker Line Up

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:30:00 GMT

Below is a list of Microsoft speakers that will be out in force imparting marketing insight and best practice at OMMA Global in San Francisco next week.

The event will be trying to answer some burning questions:

“What effect will an UNBOUND Web have on advertising and marketing? How will GPS-enabled geo-targeting change the way marketers and brands interact with consumers, and ultimately, what brands they consume? As we become connected everywhere, all the time, will our worlds become larger or smaller? Will consumers be harder or easier to reach?”

Wednesday, March 17^th

New Creative Options for Marketing with Online Video as Web Becomes ‘Lean-Back’ - Time: 2:00pm - Speaker: Dean Carignan

Drive. Shoot. Buy. Creative Frontiers of In-game Advertising - Time: 2:00pm - Speaker: Chuck Frizelle

Revenue to the In-Box: Getting More Value from Publishers’ Email Programs - Time: 2:45pm - Speaker: Jeff Lanctot

Social Media Marketing Doesn’t Have to be a Gamble - Time: 2:45pm - Speaker: Marty Collins

Thursday, March 18^th

Is Your Company Spending Too Much on Search? - Time: 11:30am - Speaker: Esco Strong

The Last Click Standing...Or Not? (Buyers Beware) - Time: 12:15pm - Speaker: Young-Bean Song

Case Study: Microsoft Feeds the Geeks - Time: 2:45pm - Speaker: Carrie Kaiser

If you’re in town, why not go along – it’s free!

Cheers

Mel

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Bing UK TV Ads – Video Interview with Ashley Highfield

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:22:30 GMT

Last night saw the first Bing TV advert go live in the UK. In November, Bing UK reached an important milestone: we removed the beta tag having added innovative features like Visual Search , Categorised Search and Twitter Integration . Our user base has since grown and got more and more engaged with the Bing search experience. In this interview, Ashley Highfield, MD & VP Consumer & Online Microsoft UK, who’s responsible for consumer products like Bing, Windows 7, Windows Phone, MSN, IE8 and...(read more)

U.S. adCenter Customers: Help us improve your adCenter Reports and Analytics tools and get a $100 adCenter credit

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:25:00 GMT

Hi everyone, a call for reporting feedback from the adCenter Team. Please note that at this time, only U.S. adCenter customers are eligible for the ad credit. Full details below. We want your feedback! Microsoft® adCenter is working on our next-generation advertising reporting and analytics product, and would like to know what you think. We’re trying to understand how you use campaign reports, what features you’d like to see built next, and how important new functionality is to you...(read more)

Social Media Tips from Lisa Myers at SES London

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:31:49 GMT

Just back from holiday to find that those fine folks at Search Engine Watch have posted a video interview I did with Lisa Myers from Verve Search after her Social Media 101 session at SES London.

In 2 minutes Lisa tells us where companies should start, that it’s not all about Twitter and Facebook, and how not to get swept away by the phenomenon.

Don’t for get we’ve published our own Social Media White Paper (PDF) which you’re welcome to download for free and find out how our team started and how we approach communicating with our customers over the web.

Cheers

Mel

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Brand Best Practices: Highlighting Your Brand in Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:59:00 GMT

Following on today’s post on the Microsoft Advertising Blog, New Whitepaper: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Digital Advertising for Brand Campaigns , today I’m going to address some best practices for incorporating your brand into your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns on adCenter. Without a doubt, one of the reasons SEM is such an attractive advertising method is its transparency in tracking return-on-investment (ROI) ; simply compare what you’re making in sales to what...(read more)

New Whitepaper: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Digital Advertising for Brand Campaigns

Anita Caras - MSFT — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Digital has never been more important for brands that are seeking to communicate and engage with their customers, this is especially true when speaking in terms of purchase decision-making and brand perception. As digital media battles for its share of cash and eyeballs in an increasingly saturated market, advertisers find themselves faced with the age old challenge of demonstrating return-on-investment (ROI) to their colleagues in the boardroom, only this time from online spend.

Marketers have always known that time spent with an advert is an important measure. Couple this with actual active engagement with an ad (rather than passive viewing) and a truer measure of effectiveness emerges in the form of dwell scores. The method behind dwell scores involves combining the length of time spent actively engaging with an ad, multiplied by the rate at which it is engaged with. As a result, dwell scores offer much more valuable evaluation metric for brand advertising.

Our new research, Dwell on Branding, proves that there is a clear connection between the amount of time that a user spends actively engaging with an online ad and a consumer's subsequent online behaviour with that brand. Using data sets from comScore and Eyeblaster, the research reveals that increased dwell scores correspond to a significant improvement in positive engagement with a brand post ad exposure. Specifically, the results show that a higher dwell score stimulates a higher number of branded search queries, increased visits to the brand website, and drives uplifts in the numbers of engaged visitors to the brand website (measured in number of pages viewed and time spent).

Various reports such as comScore's 'Whither The Click' or Eyeblaster's 'Trends Of Time And Attention In Online Advertising' illustrate that consumers are more likely to spend meaningful time with an advert than to click on it; providing further evidence that click-through rates (CTRs) alone are an unsatisfactory means of measuring performance for brand advertisers.

A gear shift is required in the world of online measurement. For campaigns geared towards building brand recognition, loyalty and affinity online, consistent measures of time spent and engagement with an advert need to be adopted, understood and advocated.

Download our whitepaper, Digital Challenge: Being Greater with Data, to learn more about the digital metrics required to evaluate the effectiveness of brand campaigns.

Microsoft adCenter API Top 10 Viewed Topics for February 2010

Walter Poupore - MSFT — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:44:00 GMT

Hello,

Here are the most viewed adCenter API topics on MSDN for February 2010.

Microsoft adCenter API
United States
Microsoft adCenter Campaign Management API Reference
Campaign Management Service Operations
California (United States)
Alabama (United States)
Microsoft adCenter Campaign Management API
WSDL Overview
KeywordPerformanceReportColumn Value Set
Microsoft adCenter API Programming Reference

Thank you.

Walter Poupore
Developer Content Manager
Microsoft

Editorial Review in Microsoft adCenter: Common Disapprovals and How to Fix Them

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:00:00 GMT

It’s a fairly common scenario. You’ve amassed your keyword list with Microsoft Advertising Intelligence , written stellar ads and uploaded your new campaigns to adCenter. You wait a few hours and then perform a few searches for your keywords on Bing. While you find most, there are some you’re not seeing your ads for. You consult the Ad Preview tool and still come up empty handed. You log in to your adCenter account (or open adCenter Desktop Beta or check your e-mail) and find that...(read more)

Atlas To Decommission Version 1 and Version 2 of Atlas Reporting API

Andrea Sharfin - MSFT — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

A note to all of our Atlas users: on Monday, March 15, 2010, we will decommission versions 1 and 2 of the Atlas Reporting API. This will impact your Media Console API usage if you have not yet updated your applications to use version 3.

Therefore, if you are using versions 1 or 2 of the Atlas Reporting API, you will need to update your application to use version 3, the current and most complete version of the Atlas Reporting API. You can access details on version 3 of the Reporting API here.

Please contact your Atlas representative if you have any concerns regarding this change, or reach out to the Atlas API team directly on the Atlas API Developer Forums on MSDN.

Keyword Normalization: What You Need to Know Before Uploading to Microsoft adCenter

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Keywords can be tricky things. You think you’ve got the most relevant, robust keyword list on the planet, but you run it through the keyword expansion wizard in Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI) just to be sure no stone was left unturned. The next thing you know, you’re creating new ad groups and writing ads for a whole host of new keywords you just couldn’t pass up. Who knew there were so many terms related to your products and services? Before you start going through your...(read more)

Research you can use in search marketing efforts from SMX West panel

Chris Norred - MSFT — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:50:00 GMT

Microsoft Advertising publishes a fascinating library of research and case studies in the online Research Library . I’d recommend that you spend an hour browsing there if you’re trying to learn some new best practices that will help in your online advertising. At SMX West on Wednesday, I had the chance to hear from others in the industry about some of the new research they’ve published with some fascinating insights into the behavior of shoppers, searchers, and advertising consumers...(read more)