It ocurred to me that while we've been covering tips, tricks and tools for keeping your adCenter campaigns in good working order, it's been a while since we've done a post on running reports in adCenter.  All the optimizations in the world aren't going to help you reach your search engine marketing (SEM) goals unless you're able to review your data and make changes as appropriate.  Hopefully this post will help get you familiar with some of the adCenter reporting basics.  (NOTE: The information below was taken directly from the adCenter Help files, accessible via the upper right hand corner within adCenter.) 

How can I use the information in Microsoft adCenter reports?

After your campaign is up and running, you can evaluate and help improve the performance of your ads by using two types of reports:

Delivery reports gather ad performance data that can help you target your campaigns, keywords, and ads to optimize your click-through rate (CTR).

Billing & Budget reports help you track the amount of money that is being spent against your campaign budget.

Can I schedule reports?

Yes. You can save report criteria as a report template (a set of report values and criteria that can be scheduled to run hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly) and then schedule the report to run automatically on a specific day of the week or month. When the report is ready to view, you will receive an e-mail message that contains a link to the report—unless you specify that you prefer to receive the report as an e-mail attachment. If the file size of your report exceeds 2 MB, the message will contain only a link to the report, and not an attachment. All e-mail notifications are sent to the e-mail address that is associated with your adCenter account. For more information, see Schedule a report in the Help section.

When will the data for Delivery reports be available?

Ad delivery data might be available as soon as two hours after people start clicking your ads. Delivery data for Account, Campaign, Ad group, and Keyword performance reports is updated hourly. All other reports are updated daily.

Can I export the report data?

Yes. You can export report content to a CSV or TSV file and then import it into a database or open it in Microsoft Office Excel. 

Can I save reports?

Yes. After running a report, you can save it with a name and description that are easy for you to recognize. The report will be available on the Recent Reports page. Microsoft adCenter retains up to 20 recent reports per customer.

Why can't I see some of the report graphs?

Some of the reports contain animated content that requires the installation of Adobe Flash Player version 6.0 or later. You can download the program at the Adobe website.

When I request report data, in which time zone is it delivered?

Report data is stored and processed in the time zone of the campaign. The data availability times, however, are shown as Pacific Time (PT). PT is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, or Greenwich Mean Time) minus 8 hours. 

After hourly data is collected, how long does it remain available? 

Hourly data for all accounts is available for 92 days. 

Why do some keyword performance reports indicate that I have match types that I didn't bid on?

Some of the match types you specify will trigger ad display for other match types as well. It works like this: If you specify broad match, your ad will also display for exact and phrase matches. If you specify phrase match, your ad will also display for exact matches. If you specify exact match, your ad will display only for exact matches.

I need to know how much I spent yesterday on my campaign. Should I run an Account Summary report or a Budget Summary report?

The Account Summary report is the best report for tracking the amount spent for a single day. The Budget Summary report is designed as a month-to-date report. Therefore, you will receive data for the entire month up to the date selected.

For more information on running reports in adCenter, visit Justin Vanning's posts, Introduction to adCenter Reporting and Help Improve Your adCenter Campaign Performance with adCenter Reports.

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