Microsoft Advertising Community

Back to School PPC Optimization Tips, Research and Downloadable Keyword Lists

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:00 GMT

The other day I stopped by my local office supply store and was taken aback by how many parents and kids were crowding the aisles filled with school supplies. Back to School shopping in July? Wow. Apparently things have changed a bit since I was a kid!

Knowing that the Back to School shopping season has already begun and that traffic peaks in early August (see chart below), now is absolutely the time to make sure your Back to School PPC campaigns are ready to capture as much of this seasonal traffic spike as possible. Here are some optimization tips to get you started:

Attract clicks by updating your ads with enticing offers (the numbered info that follows was taken from the PowerPoint presentation mentioned below).
- Focus on the deals and bargains for shoppers by using phrasing like “Coupon,” “Deal,” and “Sale.”
- Include “Coupon” in the ad copy and title (provides the largest CTR lift).
- Include “Deal” in the ad copy.
- Include “Official” in the ad copy and title.
- Include “Sale” in the ad copy and title.
- Include “School” or “Student” in the ad copy or title, respectively.
- Highlight relevance to the season and shoppers by incorporating “Back”, “School,” and “Student,” to your ad copy.
As a whole, bargain copy was producing average CTRs over 9% while school-related copy was averaging over 4%.
You can also leverage action words like “Shop”, “Buy”, “Save” and “Compare” to appeal to the buyer’s mindset.
Monitor your average positions to ensure your bidding strategy remains competitive.
Implement geographic or demographic targeting to help maintain high average position.
Review, and if necessary, expand keyword list to ensure usage of high performing keywords.
Make sure to bid on both generic and branded keywords to ensure complete coverage for all relevant terms.

While researching other pertinent info I could include in this post, I ventured over to see if our partners in Media Analytics Services had any Back to School related insights available on their Sharepoint site and boy, did they! Not only did I find a PowerPoint presentation that’s chock full of helpful research, insights and recommendations, they also had keyword lists covering general Back to School terms, as well as specific to laptops and mobile phones.

Not wanting to leave out anything that could be helpful to you, Dear Advertiser, I asked for their blessing to share their Back to School PowerPoint slides and the keyword lists here on the adCenter Blog, which they graciously agreed to (just click on the links above to download them). WIN!

Here’s a high-level sample of the type of insights you’ll find in the PowerPoint presentation:

• July 4th weekend appears to be the beginning of the Back to School shopping season according to Hitwise¹.

• Keywords gain the most search share over the next 5 weeks, and then begin to slowly taper off during a 5-6 week period ending in mid-September.

•Though online searching and research occurs during this entire timeframe, the peak purchasing season is the month leading up to the start of school.

• 94% of all Back to School shopping will have begun at least 1 week prior to the start of school, which, in many areas is the week after Labor Day, September 6, 2010².

• Based on that, most Back to School shopping will occur during the month of August.

• Almost two thirds of Back to School shopping will begin in the first half of August.

Beyond that, this PowerPoint presentation provides detailed info in terms of clicks and costs-per-click across a range of products… from Clothing and Footwear to Sports and Recreation to Beauty and Personal Care, all based on historical adCenter data. Not only that, you’ll also find keyword and demographic targeting recommendations for College and Dorm related campaigns.

Questions? Suggestions? Let us know what you think… feel free to leave a comment below!

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Introducing Our New UK Performance Team

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:58:00 GMT

Why do we all love digital advertising? I’d venture one of the main reasons is that it performs.

With more people coming online and the web becoming more and more an intrinsic part of our lives, the opportunities for marketers to harness the power of technology and reach consumers across properties like MSN, Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and Bing, are becoming more and more relevant…..and valuable.

Much of the onus is put on the platform, the data, and the accountability. But here at Microsoft Advertising, we also pride ourselves on how we service our customers.

People are our best asset, and today we’re announcing a new team in the UK which aims to take our customers’ network campaigns to the next level.

Katy Bell, who’s been with the company for 4 years, will head up a new Performance Team that will work alongside our UK display account managers to ensure a smooth, seamless experience across brand and performance campaigns, not just for our advertisers, but our audience as well.

Keeping a message consistent across multiple screens benefits users as well as the brand’s return online. So having a team that can keep these campaigns true demonstrates our commitment to both the users who spend time on our services, and those advertisers who spend money with us reaching them.

Chris Maples, who heads up advertising sales in the UK said, “This is a hugely exciting development for Microsoft’s advertising business as it seeks to deliver a complete end to end solution for advertising networks. Our mission is to become the most trusted and valuable media partner to our clients. By putting this dedicated team together, with experience from across the business, we feel we are far better placed to exceed client expectations. The digital industry remains incredibly exciting and dynamic with this new team allowing us to engage with advertising networks in a highly targeted way.”

For more on advertising with Microsoft in the UK visit: http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk

Thanks

Mel

Bing UK Summer Ice Cream Giveaway Photos and Fun Stats

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:32:00 GMT

Back at the beginning of June, Cedric Chambaz wrote about our Bing Ice Cream Give Away . Throughout June, we had a Bing-branded ice cream van travelling in and around London handing out ice lollies to passers by. In fact, the tour was such a success, we extended it by two weeks and took it to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester! The team chatted to hundreds of consumers, giving them a demo of Bing and explaining all the cool features while they slurped on their popsicles! At Microsoft, we’re...(read more)

Feedback and Feature Requests: Share Your Thoughts and Help Us Improve Microsoft adCenter

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:00:00 GMT

If you're a regular reader of the adCenter Blog--and if so, you rock!--you know that periodically we pop up to ask for feedback on how we're doing. Your feedback is crucial for us to help bubble up pain points, feature requests and give visibility to your thoughts on adCenter and how we can improve it. If you'd like to share what's on your mind, you can... 1.) Use the adCenter Feedback Form , simply enter your feedback and/or feature requests, and click "Submit". 2.) Add...(read more)

Xbox Lips Lite Case Study has Games Advertising Singing Digital

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:34:00 GMT

On the Microsoft Advertising Blog, we like to bring you the very latest digital insight in the form of case studies and proof points, so today we’re talking Games Advertising.

Whether it’s JJ Richards on in-game advertising or Mark Kroese showing how we’re helping brands reach consumers through Xbox LIVE advertising, there is no doubt that online gaming is becoming a huge area in an advertiser's multi-screen armoury.

When it came to promoting the new Xbox game Lips Party Classics, the objectives were pretty straightforward.

The team wanted to drive awareness of the new game, increase purchase intent, and create interest in console ownership among a predominantly female audience. They also wanted to engage less frequent gamers, creating interest & buzz about the brand.

The solution, which ran in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, was a creative game experience where a taste of the full Lips game could be had via Windows Live Messenger.

Consumers were invited to record a song with friends and family using Messenger. They could choose to perform one of five tunes, including Cameo’s Word Up, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, and have their friends tuning in through their conversation windows.

Pre-and post-roll rich media ads, as well as links within the game, promoted the full Lips console title to the admiring masses.

Let’s take a look at the results:

695,000 unique users played the game
7.5% clicked through to the Xbox Lips site
Lips Lite players spent a total of over 6.7 years playing the game

Research in the UK & France where we chatted to 270 Windows Live users aged 16-35 told us how engaging the campaign was:

62% of those playing the game did so more than once, over half (54%) sang more than two songs
83% said that they enjoyed playing the game
57% described the game as Fun, 35% as Modern and 29% as Something New

As for word of mouth and purchase intent:

35% are likely to play again in the future
29% said they would play often or quite a lot
8 in 10 said that they would recommend the game to others
20% of those playing said they were likely or very likely to go on to buy the full Lips Xbox game
Amongst Xbox owners the number likely to buy rose to 35%

The games advertising mantra is very much about “Invite. Don’t interrupt!”

In this case, the team created a simple vehicle that aligned with the product they were marketing, provided a fun environment for consumers to learn about the game, and generated mechanisms to share their delight and create awareness in a viral way.

For more on games advertising in Europe visit: Online Games Advertising

Cheers

Mel

adCenter Desktop Beta 7.4 Update Release Notes (July 2010)

Adib Kadir - MSFT — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:29:00 GMT

This update for adCenter Desktop includes several fixes:

Fixed: FR/UK users receiving errors on application startup after upgrading.
Fixed: Users unable to subscribe to different accounts with the same name under the same customer.
Fixed: “Internal error” when uploading account with too many editorial rejections.
Fixed: Agency users suffering application crash when clicking copy to Excel or when trying to export account.
Fixed: Some agency users receiving "Target ID is invalid" error when uploading new targets.
Fixed: Validation error after importing large numbers of ads/keywords into very large accounts.

This update also includes new updates to the import feature:

The Import Summary filter is being added for better visibility of your imported items. The Import Summary filter is an additional item in the "view" drop down menu that filters the grid to show only items recently imported. This view is helpful for reviewing and checking the items recently imported, for errors and consistency. After importing files into the desktop, the view will automatically switch to the “last import” view to allow you to quickly see the items you’ve imported and any potential issues that may have occurred.

Note: With this upgrade you will find Desktop tool at industry parity for market and language neutral exports and imports, making it easy to exchange MSN/Google bulksheets. Any French files previously exported from FR version of Desktop (before installing the July upgrade) will not be usable for Desktop imports after you install the July upgrade. You should create new exports after installing the upgrade for a smooth experience.

Users who are unable to launch the desktop or upgrade will need to uninstall the desktop and re-install it from the following location:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=164973&clcid=0x409

Share your questions or comments in the Desktop Forum.

Get Great Digital Ideas from our US and EMEA Creative Showcase

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:51:00 GMT

Bereft of digital ideas? Looking for some creative inspiration?

Check out our brand new Creative Showcase. You’ll get to experience a full range of digital experiences and creative executions – from simple banners to innovation multi-screen campaigns.

You can search campaigns by top verticals, ad formats, countries and properties.

If you’re looking for something specific, use the search bar. Or simply select see all to visually browse the thumbnails for whatever looks interesting.

Each campaign includes a short description with insight into the advertiser’s brand, their communication challenges, the campaign implementation or other helpful information.

Click through to view our US Sizzle Reel video highlighting some of the more innovative Microsoft Advertising campaigns we’ve put together in partnership with brands and agencies.

If you’re not based in America, our team in London has compiled an EMEA Creative Showcase with their own video featuring Creative Digital Advertising Ideas.

Look for new and exciting campaigns from Advertisers and Rich Media Vendors to be added to the showcases each month.

Pretty groovy huh? Do let us know what you think!

Cheers

Mel

adCenter Reports Delayed

Jeff Dillon - MSFT — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:24:00 GMT

Due to back end server processing, our reports may be delayed today (Sunday July 25) and should be available early tomorrow morning. This would affect reports via both the API and web UI. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We will post additional information here when available.

Jeff Dillon, API Support

adCenter API Sandbox Version 7 Released

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:00:00 GMT

News from the team:

You can now access the new Microsoft adCenter API Version 7 in our Sandbox environment.

Last month we released Microsoft adCenter API Version 7 to the API Production environment. Now the newest features from the adCenter Summer 2010 Upgrade and several key API improvements are available to you in both Production and Sandbox environments. At this time, there are known issues with the reporting APIs in Sandbox Version 7. The adCenter team is investigating this issue and working to resolve it.

Note: we will continue to support Version 6 through spring 2011.

To learn more, check out the Microsoft adCenter API Version 7 Release Notes.

Questions? Please visit the API Forum.

Versions of adCenter API Documentation on MSDN

Walter Poupore - MSFT — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:25:33 GMT

Hello,

Currently, adCenter API supports both Version 6 and Version 7.

To view the adCenter API documentation on MSDN, go to Microsoft adCenter APIs.

Now, since some topics exist in both V6 and V7, it is important to know which topic you are viewing.

The bread crumb trail at the top of the topic shows you the version. For example, here I’ve highlighted Version 7 at the top of a screenshot taken from the Microsoft adCenter API topic:

You can also see the version number within MSDN’s table of contents pane. Here’s a screenshot of the MSDN table of contents that shows adCenter API content for both V6 and V7:

So using either the bread crumb trail or the table of contents pane, you can quickly determine the version of a topic you’re viewing.

You can also specify, within the URL, which version of a topic you want to view. For example, let’s say you want to bookmark the URL for the V6 version of the GetAssignedQuota topic. Here is that URL (note the version info contained within parentheses):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb671541(MSADS.60).aspx

And here is the URL for the V7 version of that topic (the only difference in the URL is the version number contained within the parentheses):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb671541(MSADS.70).aspx

Note: If you click the URL containing ‘(MSADS.70)’, you’ll see that MSDN redirects it to the default version of the URL, which contains no version number, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb671541.aspx. That is because when multiple versions of a topic are on MSDN, we have the default URL (that is, the URL that doesn’t contain a version number) take you to the latest version. Today, for example, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb671541.aspx takes you to the V7 version of the topic; in the future that same URL could take you to the V8 version of the topic. Again, that is because we want the default URL to take you to the latest version. As mentioned you can always use the version number in the URL, or navigate through the table of contents, to reach earlier versions.

While I have your attention, remember to use Version 7 if you want the latest features of adCenter API.

Thank you.

Walter Poupore
Microsoft

SEM Advanced Series: Budget Optimization – Daily Budget Goal

Kim Farmer - MSFT — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:00:00 GMT

This is the 3rd post in the SEM Advanced Series, a continuation of the SEM Intermediate Series and SEM Beginner Series. These posts are intended for search engine marketing professionals looking for guidance in monitoring and adjusting the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC campaign.

For the last installment of this series on budgeting, we’ll be covering the Daily Budget Goal option in budget setting, looking at the same questions we asked in the introduction post. The Daily Budget Goal is basically setting a monthly maximum budget and then telling adCenter what you’d ideally like each day to attain. This can be beneficial for certain goals, which I’ll elaborate on below. Keep in mind that if you set your daily target for lower than your monthly maximum budget you will not receive any error in adCenter; this is important because you could be limiting your budgets. If you have a $1000 monthly budget, but only $25/day daily target, you’re essentially only using 75% of your budget each month.

Fitting Your Business Goals

Results Driven: With this setting you have a specific target you’d like to attain each day. As a best practice you should always be pulling budget reports to see how you’re landing against this goal. If you are going into budget pause, this could be a good move to rethink the other budget types or assign a higher budget for these particular campaigns

- Optimization Suggestions:
  - Be sure that you’re running keyword performance reports and optimizing the keywords to your ROI goals. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can help you devise bids and understand the auction on particular keywords.
  - You can also run a search query report to devise negative keywords to qualify the traffic you’re receiving. Implementing negative keywords helps ensure that the traffic coming to your website is better qualified and therefore, more likely to convert.
  - If you’re looking for conversions, enable our conversion tracking to make optimization easier.

Branding: For branding campaigns with limited budgets this is a way to optimize to a daily amount. Be sure to pull budget reporting to make sure you are live at the best times for your brand.

- Optimization Suggestions:
  - Run a budget report to see if more reallocation of budget is necessary. For brand advertisers this is the most vital campaign to have live at all times. This reporting will tell you when you’re being paused so you can optimize from there.
  - Keep a careful eye on when your ads are most profitable, you can add additional targeting by geographic location or demographic to qualify and optimize for the leads you have coming in. For example, if you are only able to ship to certain states, or appeal to a certain demographic more often than others.
  - Remember: Be mindful not to over-target your potential consumers with branding campaigns; you’d be surprised how many times your perceived and actual demographics vary. Pull data to make sure this is correct.

Lead Generation: If you are looking to spend a specific amount per day on lead generation for your business make sure that you’re revisiting your results regularly and analyzing the traffic you’re receiving to effectively use your budget.

- Optimization Suggestions:
  - Run a budget report to see if more movement of budget is necessary to meet your lead goals. This reporting will tell you when you’re being paused so you can optimize from there.
  - When do your leads come in? If you have conversion tracking enabled, analyze when you’re getting the most leads. For example, if the weekends are really slow, it might be more beneficial to allocate budget to Mon-Fri traffic instead, or target a certain time frame during the day and exclude another (Use Demographic Targeting - Is it right for you? by Rob to help).

I hope that you’ve found a lot of value in this series. Please be sure to read through the others if you're just catching this for the first time. We’ve examined Spend Until Depleted and Divide Across Month, as well as looking at some questions to ask yourself before setting your budgets up. Good luck!

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Test Your Digital Quotient in our Asia Advertising Competition

Mel Carson - MSFT — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:14:27 GMT

Our team at Microsoft Advertising Asia are giving advertisers and agencies in the Far East the chance to pit their digital wits against each other in an innovative competition to win a trip to the Spikes Asia Advertising Festival.

The DQ Test is open to residents aged over 18 in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, and is designed to quiz your knowledge of Digital Basics, Digital Media Trends, Consumer Behaviour, Ad Performance and Digital Creativity.

At the time of writing, 236 challengers have participated, and the competition runs until 3rd September when Gold, Silver and Bronze Digital Gurus will find out if they have earned enough points to take their place in our Hall of Fame.

So do pass this post on and get your teams involved. You could be on your way to Spikes or the proud owner of an Xbox 360.

Just go to our Microsoft Advertising Digital Quotient site and take the test!

For more update from the Asia team follow them on Twitter and Facebook

Good luck!

Mel

New Digital Research: Consumer Multi-Screen Study from Microsoft and Wunderman

Michelle Strub - MSFT — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:30:00 GMT

You may have seen news about Microsoft Advertising’s multi-screen advertising capabilities over the past year. Do Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch,” ABC’s “Flash Forward,” History Channel’s “America: The Story of US,” or NBC’s fall line-up ring a bell?

Given the recent success of these campaigns we wanted to dig deeper to understand multi-screen usage and consumers’ attitudes and expectations for multi-screen experiences. The study covered activities across computers, smart phones, TVs and game consoles, and the results were eye-opening:

· 69 percent of multi-screen consumers believe that being able to access similar content (media and advertising) across different screens makes the content more useful and their media experience more relevant and informative.

· 80 percent of consumers surveyed expect improvement in the delivery of content and advertising across devices – and they report that these improvements will increase their engagement.

The way consumers interact with brands, products and services is dramatically impacted by digital media. Consumers are using their PCs, mobile phones, TVs and XBOX Live (sometimes at the same time!) to perform the same functions, whether to research products, for social networking, to play games, or make purchases. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to offer marketers advertising solutions across all of these screens while delivering access to a large and growing audience of over 161 million unique visitors in the US, (comScore, June 2010), with high levels of engagement and impact.

As multi-screen activity becomes more mainstream, marketers have the unique opportunity now to work with their media partners to figure out how to reach their target audience in the right place at the right time, to improve relevance and results. For more on this study, download our Multi-Screen Consumer White Paper.

Alison Engel, senior marketing director, for Microsoft Advertising, will unveil more from the white paper at today’s OMMA Metrics event in San Francisco on July 22, 2010.

“Microsoft’s leadership in researching and understanding consumers across multiple digital screens and mobile channels is not only impressive and comprehensive; it’s timely for helping to inform agencies, companies, vendors, practitioners. We’re thrilled they can join us on stage at OMMA Metrics this week to unveil new findings from their recent study about the impact of advertising across multiple screens and what it means for the future of advertising.” –Judah Phillips, senior director, Global Site Analytics, Monster Worldwide, Inc. and chair for the OMMA Metrics Conference

For those of you unable to make the trip to San Francisco, you can register now for a webinar overview of the research hosted by ANA on August 4, 2010 (requires membership).

Thanks,

Michelle

The Bifurcating Display Advertising Industry

Eric Dahlberg - MSFT — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:41:00 GMT

The world of online display advertising as we know it is bifurcating.

The display ad market, which accounted for $8.0B of the $22.7B in total internet advertising revenues in 2009 – and is projected to grow to $13.4B by 2013 – is rapidly headed in two very different directions.

One direction leads to a land of increasingly complex, but incredibly engaging and custom solutions that make full use of the digital palette. The other direction leads to the land of “scale display”, where programmatic buying, measurement, and constant refinement yield search-like efficiencies long promised in display but not yet delivered. And in the middle… well, going forward there won’t be much left in the middle. The bread and butter of the display advertising market today – those old-fashioned sponsorships and simply-targeted audience buys – are rapidly being cannibalized by the superior solutions down one of the two aforementioned roads.

Microsoft Advertising is committed to compelling offerings for marketers heading in either direction, and of course we expect most to build robust marketing campaigns that include elements of both.

Custom Brand Solutions

A sizeable chunk of the business is headed down one road and is becoming more custom, more premium, more integrated, and more interactive. Big brand advertisers – accustomed to launching campaigns via a flood of 30 second spots – are pushing online publishers to deliver on the full promise of the digital canvas with interactive solutions that help them stand out. “One of a kind”, “never been done before”, and “big idea” are phrases commonly found on RFP’s. To win this business and snag some of those big TV budgets that everyone in digital advertising salivates over, publishers are going to greater lengths than ever before to accommodate big brands via deep integration into site content, intense collaboration between advertiser and publisher, and large, custom ad formats.

Microsoft Advertising continues to aggressively target this “high rent district” of display advertising, with captivating rich media executions on the new MSN Home Page, three screen solutions across the PC, TV, and mobile devices, custom integration opportunities on Wonderwall, and Glo, and other offerings too numerous to count.

Scale Display

The other road leads to an increasingly crowded market full of new intermediaries including demand side platforms, ad exchanges, agency trading desks, pub brokers, dynamic creative optimizers, and data providers who are sharing what was an already crowded space full of hundreds of ad networks. These players, both new and old, are rushing to create a niche for themselves in the emerging world of scale display, which promises to bring the efficiencies of search marketing to online display advertising.

Increasingly, scale display and the participation of these intermediaries is dependent on the efficiencies enabled by an advertising exchange. Microsoft is moving aggressively to provide our customers with access to our owned and operated inventory, as well as partner inventory, via our exchange. This move is in addition to our expansion of the Microsoft Media Network, which combined with the exchange, provides a holistic solution for our customers. In recent weeks we have on-boarded US Windows Live inventory - including Hotmail and Messenger - into our exchange, providing a highly liquid pool of high quality inventory to demand partners on an RTB basis. We have integrated with each of the major DSP’s to ensure that our customers can work with the partner of their choice in accessing inventory.

Moving forward we will make available the rest of our US owned and operated inventory and partner supply. We’re excited about the efficiencies offered by an exchange-enabled ecosystem, and are committed to providing a foundation that enables innovation by allowing third parties to add value in a transparent, trustworthy ecosystem.

There is additional good news for Atlas clients in that over the next six months we will be integrating DSP’s into the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance. This will enable Atlas advertisers to seamlessly partner with the DSP of their choice to extend their buys onto RTB exchanges while enjoying all the benefits of campaign tracking and optimization that Atlas already provides.

The digital advertising landscape continues to evolve and be an exciting place. At Microsoft Advertising we’re working hard to provide marketers with compelling solutions no matter which road they are on.

Thanks,

Eric

Installing adCenter Desktop With Elevated Privileges

Adib Kadir - MSFT — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:01:00 GMT

In organizations where users are not the administrators of their computers, there are several methods of elevating the adCenter Desktop installation:

Log on to the computer as an administrator and install adCenter Desktop.
Use Group Policy software installation and management to assign or publish adCenter Desktop.
Use a software management tool, such as Microsoft Systems Management Server, in an administrative context.
Setting the Windows Installer policy Always install with elevated privileges allows a user without administrator rights to the computer to install any Windows Installer package.

To allow users with limited permissions to install and update adCenter Desktop Enable the Always install with elevated privileges Windows Installer policy under User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Installer and Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Installer.

Celebrity Video from Dougray Scott’s Leuka Charity Golf Day Sponsored by Bing

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:02:13 GMT

It’s not often Hollywood comes to Chiswick in West London. But last Friday it did just that! Last week, I wrote that we’d been honoured to sponsor Dougray Scott’s Mini Masters golf tournament in aid of the charity Leuka . It was a fantastic day filled with great humour, fabulous music from the likes of James Walsh and The View, plus some superb (and not so superb) golf from the celebrities and their teams that Dougray had assembled. In the video we chat to Hugh Grant, James Nesbitt, Tim Henman, Damian...(read more)

Microsoft Starts Testing on Yahoo! in Mid-July

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:28:00 GMT

As we continue to make progress implementing various aspects of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance , our two companies continue to work together towards the goal of providing a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season. An important part of our approach is to do the necessary tests to help ensure all of our systems and processes are in place. In mid-July, we began testing the delivery of organic results from Bing...(read more)

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance News: Editorial Guideline Updates (US and Canada)

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:00:00 GMT

The upcoming Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is without a doubt one of the most exciting changes I’ve seen in the search engine marketing (SEM) industry since I started working in it back in 2005. Although I’m looking forward to seeing how this new partnership will alter the SEM landscape, there’s no doubt Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! advertisers alike are looking at the not-too-distant future with a skeptical eye and want as much transparency as possible when it comes to knowing what’s coming, when and why. We were recently given some information on how the new, hybrid Editorial Guidelines are shaping up, and so in the spirit of providing that transparency, we wanted to pass that info along to all of you.

The new Editorial Guidelines combine the best of both search providers’ network quality policies, resulting in not only more effective ads, but also helping to create a safer search marketplace for the growing Bing and Yahoo! Search audience of 158 million searchers¹ in the U.S. and 15 million in Canada¹. Below is a brief summary of the editorial changes adCenter advertisers can expect to see implemented over the next few months, starting in August.

NOTE: As the new guidelines take effect, there may be slight delays in getting your ads live. Be sure to load your keywords and ads in advance so that they have time to undergo editorial review.

New Additions to Disallowed Content

Electronic cigarettes – if you’re currently running adCenter campaigns that advertise electronic cigarettes, these will soon join the list of disallowed products on adCenter.

Usenet content – while you’ll still find Usenet results in the organic listings on Bing, the PPC advertising of Usenet content will no longer be allowed once these new changes roll out.

Other Policy Changes

Privacy Policy – if you collect any personally identifiable information from visitors to your site, make sure you’re in compliance with the updated privacy policy.

Pharmacy and Prescription Only Medications – sellers of prescription drugs online should review this policy for applicability to their campaigns.

Ads and Content / Relevancy and Quality – it’s always a best practice to make sure you’re following these consolidated rules and tips to set your ads up for success in adCenter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I disagree with disapproval in my account, how can I get this changed?

A: If you feel strongly that your ad or keywords were disapproved incorrectly, you can attempt to appeal the decision. The adCenter customer support team responds to all appeals as quickly as possible; however, the appeal process may take as many as 10 business days. Please note that if your appeal is denied, that decision is final.

Q: What can I do now to prepare for these changes and avoid downtime?

A: Review the updated Editorial Guidelines to see if your ads and keywords may be affected.

Q: How do I know if my account is affected by the new editorial guidelines?

A: Review the updated Editorial Guidelines to see if your ads and keywords may be affected. Over the coming weeks, if your accounts are affected you may notice new disapprovals in your account. If your campaigns have been affected by the new Editorial Guidelines, use the Ads and Keywords Disapprovals Tool to help manage your disapprovals and get your ads live.

If you have questions that aren’t answered here, leave a comment below or visit our forums and post your question there; Microsoft staff will address your questions or comments in either spot.

¹comScore qSearch May 2010

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TED Talks @ Cannes – Two Online Now

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:06:00 GMT

You may remember we hosted TED@Cannes last month, and I’ve just been pinged by them to let me know a couple of the talks that were recorded there have been edited and are now online.

Hans Rosling on population growth.

“The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).”

Clay Shirky on how cognitive surplus will change the world.

“Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world.”

Don’t forget to check out our “behind the scenes” look at TED in Cannes video too!

Cheers

Mel

The One Stop Shop for Common Microsoft adCenter Help and Resources Links (Part I of II)

Jeremy Lamothe - MSFT — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:00:00 GMT

As we all know, Bing and Microsoft Advertising have hundreds of resources and help tutorials all over the internet to help you, the advertiser, learn more about our product offerings and how you can be successful online marketers.

In an effort to help save you valuable time, I have provided a list of organized adCenter help and resource links to assist you including editorial guidelines, bulk management tools, video tutorials, Bing resources and Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance updates…

Microsoft adCenter FAQ & Help

- Editorial Guidelines

- Trademark Policy

- Available adCenter Reports

- Available adCenter Report Attributes

- How to Schedule a Report

- Create & Change adCenter Performance Alerts (ensure your email is correct by clicking “My Settings” in upper right hand corner in adCenter UI when logged in)

- adCenter Conversion Tracking

Bulk Management & Optimization Tools

- Microsoft adCenter Desktop

- Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI)

- Microsoft adCenter Desktop & MAI Video Tutorials

- Microsoft adCenter Labs

- adCenter Ad Preview Tool

Microsoft Advertising (Official Site)

- adCenter Learning Center

- adCenter Best Practices

- Case Study Research Library

- Microsoft adExcellence Certification

Stay Informed

- Microsoft adCenter Community (Official Blog)

- Microsoft adCenter Community Forums

- Microsoft adCenter Summer 2010 Upgrade: New Features

- Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance

Get to Know Bing

- Bing Community (Official Blogs)

- Bing Toolbox

- Webmaster Center

This list of links is only the tip of the iceberg! In the next couple of weeks, I will be posting a comprehensive list of best practice optimization links including various adCenter blog posts. Best practice topics include budgeting, match types, mobile, content, keywords, ads, account structure, targeting and niche verticals.

What best practices would you like to see included in the link list? What types of information do you find yourself taking too much time to find? Until next time!

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What Can You Do with Atlas' End-To-End Campaign Management API?

Andrea Sharfin - MSFT — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:00:00 GMT

With the release of the Atlas Creative Management API this June, Atlas will have a complete, end-to-end API suite for campaign and creative management. So what does that mean to you?

The Atlas Creative Management API allows API users to create and update Atlas Ads and Creatives, as well as upload digital campaign assets into Atlas. With this release, the Atlas APIs now allow users to manage campaigns from the creation of Media Plans to the uploading of Creatives.

That means you can use Atlas data in really useful, flexible ways: to feed your dashboards, workflow solutions and analytics or visualization systems. Like so:

Interested in find out how you can use Atlas data in more flexible, interesting ways than you ever have before? Check out the Atlas API documentation on MSDN or visit our developer forum or contact your Atlas account representative.

adCenter API Sandbox Environment Downtime: July 19-20

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:00:00 GMT

The adCenter API Sandbox environment will experience downtime from Monday, July 19 to Tuesday, July 20 to make updates for the adCenter Summer 2010 Upgrade and launch Sandbox in adCenter API Version 7. The adCenter API Sandbox environment will be unavailable, but the adCenter API Production environment will operate as normal, and ads will continue to serve.

After this release, API Version 7 will be available in both Production and Sandbox environments. We will continue to support API Version 6 through spring 2011.

Questions? Please visit the API Forum.

New Video from the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance: what does it mean for you?

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:27:07 GMT

The team’s put together a video illustrating how the upcoming unified marketplace will help you reach your Yahoo! Search and Bing customers through one platform – Microsoft adCenter. Take a look! For more information, check out the Search Alliance website , and stay tuned here on the blog for news and updates....(read more)

Video: The Future of Advertising is Here - Kostas Mallios - Digital Showcase NYC

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:08:15 GMT

Kostas Mallios, GM of Corporate R&D at Microsoft, speaking at our Digital Showcase event in New York last month.

He talks about the experience on Windows Phone 7, demos Pivot from Microsoft Live Labs, and gives the assembled advertisers and agencies his opinion of the future of advertising.

Check out Joshua Green’s presentation on Viruses Make you Ill from the event as well.

Cheers

Mel

Microsoft adCenter Home Page Dashboard: Instant Insight Into Your Campaigns

Young Shi- MSFT — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:00:00 GMT

The new adCenter Home page dashboard has been released as part of the adCenter Summer 2010 Upgrade. The dashboard provides a quick snapshot of your online campaigns, and it resides right on the Home page. As soon as you login to adCenter, you will get instant insight about all your campaigns across the entire account in a matter of seconds.

The new Dashboard is designed to focus on 3 basic advertiser needs: spotting campaign trends, identifying the top and bottom campaigns, and watching for budget depletion. Furthermore, the campaigns on the dashboard are deep-linked to the Campaigns tab work flow; once you have identified a campaign that needs your attention, clicking it brings you to the exact workflow page under Campaigns tab where you can take action.

Silverlight version and non-Silverlight version

We have provided two versions of the dashboard: one for Silverlight and the other for non-Silverlight. You can switch to either version by clicking the toggle on the top right of the dashboard. We encourage our users to use Silverlight version since it provides a richer, more visual dashboard with graphs and more interactive features than the other one. If you have Silverlight v4 installed, the Home page will launch the Silverlight version automatically. If you haven’t installed Silverlight v4, the non-Silverlight version dashboard is launched instead. In this case, you can easily upgrade to Silverlight version by clicking “Try it now” at the bottom of the non-Silverlight dashboard.

Dashboard gadgets: Silverlight version

Campaign trends gadget:

provides trend graphs for your all campaigns within the account. You can select various date ranges for each campaign to see how it performs over time. You can see trend graphs for each metric such as Impressions and Clicks individually, or put them together to see how they relate to each other.

Alerts gadget:

provides the important alerts on your accounts, billing and campaigns. It also provides news and FAQ as well.

Campaign performance gadget:

provides a data grid showing you the performance metrics for all your campaigns within the account. Sorting the data grid by Impressions, Clicks or other metrics by clicking a column header, you can identify the top campaigns or bottom campaigns right away.

Campaign spend vs. budget gadget:

provides a data grid showing you the budget depletion information on each of your campaigns within the account. It goes beyond simply providing the depletion percentage- it provides forecasting, warnings and suggestions on your campaigns that may run out of budget before the end of month.

Dashboard gadgets: non-Silverlight version

Campaign trends gadget:

provides trend graphs for your top 10 campaigns within the account. You can select various date ranges for each campaign to see how it performs over time. You can see a trend graph for each metric such as Impressions and Clicks individually, or put them together to see how they relate to each other.

Alerts gadget:

provides the important alerts on your accounts, billing and campaigns. It also provides news and FAQ as well.

Top campaigns by spend gadget:

provides a data grid showing you the performance metrics for your top 10 campaigns by Spend within the account.

Coming Soon

We will continue to iterate and improve the dashboard. Watch for:

· Usability updates, including the option to keep “All Campaigns” always at bottom in Campaign performance gadget.

· An increase in the maximum number of Campaigns in an account.

· More customization capabilities to allow advertisers to tailor the gadgets to their specific business needs.

I am one of the program managers at adCenter responsible for designing and implementing the dashboard. Would love to hear feedback from you. You could post your comments on this thread or in the adCenter Forum.

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