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Why is my Ad not showing? - Campaign Troubleshooting in adCenter -

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Why is my Ad not showing? - Campaign Troubleshooting in adCenter

posted Mon, Dec 21 2009

It can drive you mad sometimes.

You’ve spent days, maybe weeks agreeing on strategy, keywords and ad text with your client and they have finally said “Go!” You figure that’s the final hurdle; putting all those spreadsheets and campaigns up in adCenter in the hopes of getting traffic to your clients. So you do all the work, press the button and go home for the night, safe in the knowledge that Microsoft will look after you. Then the next morning, your customer asks where his traffic is. You check and find the ads aren’t live. It’s highly awkward and rather frustrating.

I’m an advertiser – not a Microsoft employee – so I feel your pain, but you need to check for yourself that your campaign is up and running and you also need to be aware just how many things to check for.

Some are simple mistakes, others are simply a case of having to be vigilant.

Falling Foul of Editorial Guidelines

This is one of the hardest to predict in advance. For example, did you know that advertising methods to avoid traffic tickets is not allowed? No idea why, because an EU ruling made it clear this was fine – and advice like “Park in our Car Park” might be construed as such a method. The full adCenter editorial guidelines are really quite developed, and many of them generate automated flags while others might get picked up with manual flags. I’ll talk about them in next month’s post, but you should review both the editorial guidelines and the disallowed products and services prior to uploading your campaigns.

Budget

I have always had a tendency to put a limit on the budget right at the start of my work, just in case I inadvertently try to set bid prices up at 50 dollars a click instead of 50 cents. This can easily lead to campaigns being all ready to go, but with no money in the pot to let them show. Have a look at your budgets both across the whole account and also across the campaign.

Bid Price

In a similar vein to budget, but much more likely, you need to check that you have set a realistic bid price for traffic. Many people are just “dipping their toes” into the search engine marketing (SEM) space. Just because the minimum bid price is a few pennies per click, it is entirely possible that your competitors have already worked out what the traffic is worth and have decided to pay substantially more for the traffic. Good quality adverts, with good historical click through rates (CTRs) are rewarded by Microsoft, giving your advert more impressions, and clicks at a lower cost per click, but until you HAVE an historical click through rate for a particular keyword that is mathematically meaningful, you might need to push the boat out for just a bit.

My advice would be to start with a bid price which is certainly likely to generate enough impressions at the start, then try to bring it down through quality text that generates good click-through rates.

Uploading a Spreadsheet

When you upload a spreadsheet – maybe with many hundreds of ad groups – the system does not make the adGroups live until you “submit” them from the web interface after upload. This is now quite easy to do, once you know how:

1. Select an imported campaign.

2. If you have not set a budget for your campaign, at the top of the Select an ad group page, click [Edit], type a campaign budget, and then click Save.

3. Select the check boxes next to the ad groups you want to submit, click Submit ad group.

adcenter-ads

Using the adCenter Preview Tool to check

Checking whether your advert is live on Bing is now easier, using the adCenter Ad Preview tool. This tool lets you check on whether your advert is running without detrimentally affecting the quality of your advert’s performance. It’s probably best to use the tool as soon as you have set your campaign live... that way you’ll avoid the call from the client altogether.

Best,

Dixon

Dixon Jones is the Managing director of from Receptional Internet Marketing Consultants – a UK consultancy specializing in search marketing.

Comments

  • Mon, Dec 21 2009 05:43AM

    I have the same problem.

    I initiated a campaign. have keywords and ads added. When I crosscheck a keyword nothing comes up not even ads of the competition. It's not a problem with the budget. At least the competition should come up, or something, on the right of the search page.

    The keyword for example is 'printed envelopes', nothing unusual.

    Any ideas?

    Ralf

    Ralf

  • Mon, Dec 21 2009 06:31AM

    There are certainly plenty of adverts on the phrase "printed envelopes'. So let's investigate...

    I am going to start by asking you what country you are in? I am wondering if you are not seeing adverts because you are set to see non-english adverts? Try setting your location to that of your target audience at: www.bing.com/worldwide.aspx (I hope that URL workd for you...)

  • Mon, Dec 21 2009 11:08AM

    Thanks Dixon for comment. Actually I did set up US as audience in the set up options.

    I run a similar campaign on Google ads and its fine there.

    Any other suggestions?

    Ralf

  • Mon, Dec 21 2009 12:37PM

    Hi Ralf - Mel here!

    Have you taken a look at the ad preview tool? community.microsoftadvertising.com/.../adcenter-ad-preview-now-available-see-if-your-ad-is-showing-on-bing.aspx

    If that doesn't help, send me your details through to by email from my site profile and we'll take a look. Account number, company name etc and we'll follow up....

    Cheers Mel

  • Mon, Dec 21 2009 10:11PM

    I am very impressed with PubCenter so far. I can't compare it to AdSense in any way, but I do have to say it's up there way above many PPC networks

  • Tue, Dec 22 2009 04:54AM

    Ralf - you have selected a KW destination - Param1 - for your URL but have not associated a URL in the Param1 field - check out advertising.microsoft.com/.../classroom for videos on Dynamic text.

    Hope that helps!

    Mel

  • Tue, Dec 22 2009 10:40AM
    Ralf

    Mel, Can you change this for me? I do not really know what this all means

    Thanks a bunch

  • Wed, Dec 23 2009 03:55AM

    >>Actually I did set up US as audience in the set up options.<<

    But physically, where are you, Ralf? That's my question? It sounds like you are targeting an advert to US users, and then you are saying you can't see it. So I am asking if you are in the US or not?

  • Thu, Dec 24 2009 05:34PM

    Are there people or companies that you pay to get you up and advertising on adwords?  

  • Tue, Jan 05 2010 01:04AM

    Make sure the editorial is right.I find it strange that Microsoft creates an Microsoft Adcenter Preview Tool without GeoTargeting.  2 Months later since the October release you still can't (Won't do this?).  I sometimes wonder if BING is serious about actually building functionality that we (Advertisers/Customers) can use, rather than toot your horn how great you are?.

    The only thing BING does do right is not play games with Geo Targeted terms showing up in locations outside your specified campaign targets.  Try this as an experiment in Yahoo! and Google set up a word like "chicago plumber service", with an illinois Geo-Target.  Now go to New York City and type "chicago plumber service"....guess what theres your AD!

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