adCenter Blog

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence - Using the Traffic and Demographic Tools for Market Trends

Katrina Morris - MSFT — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:52:00 GMT

This is the second in a series of blog posts focusing on Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (formerly Microsoft adCenter Add-in^Beta for Excel), coinciding with the launch of Microsoft Advertising Intelligence in the UK. Last week I covered the Keyword Extraction and Keyword Suggestion tools; this week I will be looking at the Keyword Research tools. The Keyword Research tools provide up-to-date traffic and demographic data for your selected keywords.

Traffic

The Traffic tool is split into two separate tools - Traffic by Month and Traffic by Day. (Note that in the U.S. you can also view Content Impressions by Month; Content tools will be covered in a separate post.)

What do they do?

The Traffic tools provide monthly and daily traffic volumes for any keywords that you select. The Traffic by Month tool provides historical data and forecasts monthly query counts, and the Traffic by Day tool provides daily query counts for given keywords.

By simply highlighting keywords in an Excel worksheet and clicking the Traffic by Month or Traffic by Day button, the tool will provide you with traffic volumes for each of those time periods.

Example of Traffic by Month results

Using the Options button and the Tool Settings tab, you can tailor the report to show the data you need. The Traffic by Month tool can report data from up to 24 months back and forecast up to 12 months ahead. You also have the option of choosing a custom date range for your report. And, to display the results in a graph, tick the Display Graph check box in the Options dialog box.

The Traffic by Day tool can also be customised in the Options dialog box. You can receive data from up to 60 days back and forecast up to 7 days, as well as having the option of a custom date range.

Example of Traffic by Day results

Demographic

What do they do?

The Age Group and Gender tool provides age and gender information for keywords for a given time period, and the Search-User Location tool provides data on selected UK countries or top cities for your selected keywords.

Age Group and Gender

By selecting keywords in an Excel worksheet and hitting the Age Group and Gender button, you will receive an age and gender split for each of your keywords as above.

The age split in the report is the same split used in adCenter for incremental targeting. Findings from Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can be used to set incremental bids on your account. Currently you can receive age and gender data for the last month, e.g. in the above example you might want to increase bids by 10% for 35-49 and 50-64 year olds for the term 'cruises'.

For more information on demographic targeting in adCenter, check out adCenter Help.

Search-User Location

By selecting keywords in an Excel worksheet and hitting the Search-User Location button, you can get information on the percentage of searches for top cities in the UK or for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

How I can use these tools?

Traffic Proposals

The Traffic by Month and Traffic by Day tools are ideal to use for keyword traffic proposals

Keyword Prioritisation

The traffic tools can be used to identify the high volume terms and therefore the terms to focus on in your account
Tailor your keyword lists from other ad platforms to adCenter
Use the traffic tools to see which terms in accounts you have with other engines will drive traffic through adCenter

Seasonality

Use the traffic tools to distinguish seasonal patterns year on year, and review how terms perform year on year i.e. see how the keyword flowers performed on Valentine's Day 2008 vs. 2009

Targeting

The demographic tools help you to identify your audience and their location, and helps you to target them using incremental targeting through adCenter

In the next blog we will be looking at the Pricing – Keyword Monetization feature, which provides up-to-date traffic and cost data for your selected keywords.

For more information on the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence or to download the tool visit the U.K. www.letsearchmakeyousmarter.com page or the U.S. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence page. And take a look at the tutorial videos as well.

adCenter and Atlas Media Console Receive Click Measurement Accreditation from the Media Rating Council

Brendan Kitts — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:01:00 GMT

I’m pleased to announce that adCenter and the Atlas Media Console have received accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC), indicating our compliance with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)’s Click Measurement Guidelines and the MRC’s Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research.

This is the first year for click measurement standards accreditation, and Microsoft is one of the industry’s first companies to receive this endorsement. The accreditation of adCenter and the Atlas Media Console demonstrates Microsoft’s dedication to adhering to IAB industry standard ad measurement practices. Our compliance with these standards helps to ensure that advertisers don’t get charged for invalid or fraudulent clicks.

The Atlas Media Console is a suite of tools that enables agencies and advertisers to conduct all facets of digital marketing from media buys and creative assignment to campaign execution and analytics. Atlas Media Console has also attained MRC accreditation of impressions for the fourth year running.

“MRC accreditation is incredibly important to Microsoft Advertising, providing assurance to the online advertising community that we are completely aligning with IAB’s standards for clicks,” said Robin Domeniconi, vice president, US Advertising, Publishing & Marketing. “This is further demonstration of our dedication to being a strategic partner by improving transparency, accuracy and reliability as it relates to click quality and measurement. We want our advertisers to be able to make informed decisions about their campaigns.”

George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the MRC said, “Microsoft continues to be a leader in seeking compliance with Industry standards and has again demonstrated this with MRC Accreditation of the click measurements of adCenter and the Atlas Media Console applications. These applications were subjected to rigorous MRC audit and the evaluation of our audit committee and are in compliance with both the MRC Standards and the IAB Click Measurement Guidelines. We applaud this effort and the transparency and assurance that Microsoft’s commitment has brought to the Industry.”

adCenter Advertisers - Want to Win a Bing T-Shirt? Learn How…

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:10:00 GMT

Do you love Bing ? Show it! We have an opportunity for you to enter to win one of 15 Bing T-shirts that will be given away at random to adCenter Advertisers. Here’s how: -- Update your Facebook or Twitter status (or both!) to let your friends know...(read more)

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence - Keyword and Negative Keyword Expansion

Katrina Morris - MSFT — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:48:00 GMT

To coincide with the release of the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool (previously the adCenter Add In for Excel) in the UK, I will be writing a series of blog posts that will go over the features of the tool and ways in which you can use the tool to help with your day to day tasks. With Advertising Intelligence, you can do anything from bid management to creating negative keywords, all within Excel 2007.

Keyword Generation - Keyword Extraction and Keyword Suggestion

This week we will be looking at the Keyword Generation Feature. The Keyword Generation feature is split into two parts - Keyword Extraction and Keyword Suggestion.

Keyword Extraction

What does it do?

The Keyword Extraction tool will review you selected website and will suggest keywords based on the content of the website.

Keyword Suggestion

The keyword suggestion feature is split into three different keyword generation tools as below:

What do they do?

All three Keyword Generation tools can generate up to 100 keywords. You have the ability with the tool to select the level of confidence adCenter has in the keywords it suggests.

The options are:

0 - adCenter will return anything
0.2 - quite relevant keywords
0.5 - very relevant terms
1 - only the term you put in is relevant

Obviously the lower you set the level of confidence, the more keywords adCenter will return. We recommend setting the confidence level to 0.2, as this will return a good amount of relevant keywords.

Although all three Keyword Generation features suggest new keywords, they all work slightly different.

Campaign Association

Campaign Association suggests keywords based on advertiser bidding behaviour. It will suggest keywords that it believes are in a similar category to your selected keywords.

Campaign Association Results

Queries that Contain your Query

Queries that Contain your Keyword suggests keywords that contain the original keyword you have selected, e.g. for the term 'cruise' it will come back with 'tom cruise' and 'caribbean cruise' as below.

Queries that Contain your Query Results

Related Search

Related Search suggests recent related searches from Bing.

Related Search Results

How can I use these features?

All four features are ideal to use to build out keyword lists, but have remained separate so that they are more tailored and specific unlike others on the market. Although each feature is primarily used to expand keyword lists, each tool has its own unique selling points:

Keyword Extraction

Use the feature to gain a quick list of keywords based on your website

Campaign Association

Use the feature to ensure that your account contains all the important core generic terms

Queries that Contain your Keyword

Use contained to develop an extensive negative keyword list and ensure your ads are not showing for irrelevant searches

Related Search

Generate keyword lists beyond core terms
View common misspellings, including punctuation usage
Ensure you have the current popular terms in the account

Note: The keywords generated by Microsoft Advertising Intelligence are not guaranteed to meet adCenter Editorial Guidelines. You are responsible for the keywords you choose. For more information on Keyword Expansion Best Practices see the adCenter Keyword Expansion PPC Best Practices Checklist.

In the next blog we will be looking at the Keyword Research - Traffic and Demographic Features, which provide up-to-date traffic and demographic data for your selected keywords.

2009 U.S. Microsoft Search Summit – thoughts on PPC, adCenter and Bing

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:02:00 GMT

The U.S. Microsoft Search Summit was held the first week in June in Bellevue, WA. We brought together 80 participants from the worlds of SEM and SEO to learn their opinions about Microsoft Advertising and the new decision engine, Bing . The conference...(read more)

Introducing adCenter ClickIDs

Brendan Kitts — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:01:00 GMT

Today we are letting you know about a new feature to help you better monitor traffic coming from your adCenter campaigns. Read this post to learn about finding duplicate clicks in your web server logs.

When analyzing click counts from your web server logs, the click counts may differ from the count shown in the adCenter user interface and reports. Why might this be occurring? It turns out that routine activities, such as a web-visitor refreshing on your landing page, may be causing your web traffic to appear as if multiple visitors came to your site. This can lead to click inflation in your web server logs. By taking advantage of adCenter ClickIDs, you can reduce these potentially erroneous clicks and help ensure that your reporting systems are only tracking true counts of referrals and match up with adCenter.

How to switch on ClickIDs

Open up your adgroup
Select your ad
Add msclkid={msclkid} to your adCenter destination URL
1. If your destination URL is www.dataminingcasestudies.com, then add as follows www.dataminingcasestudies.com/?msclkid={msclkid}.
2. If your URL is www.dataminingcasestudies.com/?param1=1 then add as follows www.dataminingcasestudies.com/?param1=1&msclkid={msclkid}
3. Please note that some web servers are not configured to accept query parameters, and when making any change there's always a risk of introducing a typo or other error, so we recommend double checking that the above URL works after you've completed your changes.

The final edited URL will look something like the figure below.

How ClickIDs can help you improve your tracking

Whenever a user clicks on your ad, adCenter will then replace the {msclkid} that you embedded with an internally generated ClickID. Your webserver then receives the incoming request plus ClickID and logs both. Below is an example of what you might see in your web server logs.

131.107.0.73 - - [07/Aug/2008:04:10:38 -0400] "GET /?msclkid=cdd4afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5 HTTP/1.0" 200 4674 "http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=data+mining+case+studies&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)"

You can now use the ClickID to eliminate duplicate calls. For example if you see a series of records in your weblog such as:

131.107.0.73 - - [07/Aug/2008:04:10:38 -0400] "GET /?msclkid=cdd4afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5 HTTP/1.0" 200 4674 "http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=data+mining+case+studies&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)"
131.107.0.73 - - [07/Aug/2008:04:11:38 -0400] "GET /?msclkid=cdd4afcccb1c9a4cad9544dd7e5006d5 HTTP/1.0" 200 4674 "http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=data+mining+case+studies&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)"
131.107.0.73 - - [07/Aug/2008:04:12:38 -0400] "GET /?msclkid=abc4accccd1c9aecad1544ed7e4111e1 HTTP/1.0" 200 4674 "http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=data+mining+case+studies&form=QBRE" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)"

Then you will be able to recognize that the first two are duplicate referrals (same user who has refreshed their page), and the third is a separate unique click, so only 2 referrals from adCenter instead of 3.

Reconciliation Problems Be Gone! (Well. Almost!)

Neither adCenter nor web analytics companies can eliminate duplicate calls and repeated refreshes from users. However ClickIDs can help to let you know what traffic was uniquely referred from adCenter. This functionality is optional and we hope that it will provide you with more accurate information on click referrals coming from adCenter.

Canada: Microsoft adCenter's Wild West

Catherine Buck - MSFT — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:30:00 GMT

It's no mystery that the economy has seen better times, and we at Microsoft adCenter understand how important it is for you to maximize your ROI on every click. That's why I'm here to let you in on an insider's tip that will show you how to stretch your advertising dollars significantly further this year.

I have been working exclusively on the adCenter Canada market for over 2 years now and I've witnessed many US advertisers achieve a better ROI with their Canadian campaigns than with their US campaigns. My teammate Matt Roberts (a longtime asset to the US adCenter team) came up with a spot-on analogy about the Canadian adCenter market: "Canada: it's the Wild West of adCenter. The clicks are cheap and plentiful, so get in now and stake out your territory because the rest of the pioneers and prospectors are hot on your covered wagon's trail."

adCenter Canada launched in February 2007, almost two years after adCenter launched in the US. Consequently, the Canadian market has had less time to become saturated with advertisers. The result is the Wild West effect that Matt described: decreased competition, cheap CPCs and high CTRs. Here are a few examples of how much more affordable clicks can be when you advertise north of the border:

Keyword	US CPC	Canada (English) CPC
window blinds	$3.82	$0.25
birthday parties	$0.51	$0.07
air miles	$1.97	$0.31
wedding dress	$0.47	$0.10
insurance quotes	$14.94	$3.47
laptops	$1.80	$0.56
plasma tv	$1.69	$0.64
patio furniture	$1.09	$0.47

[source: Microsoft Advertising Intelligence. 6-4-09. Averages of all match types, past 30 days.]

In addition to the relatively pale advertiser competition up north, studies show that Canadian internet users place second only to Finland in terms of the number of searches conducted per user per month (comScore 2008, Canada Digital Year in Review). It could be those long winters which cause Canadians to do so much virtual surfing, but I think that the exceptionally high penetration of broadband access in Canada is also a definite factor (CBC.ca, October 2008; BizReport.com, June 2007).

Canada's population is about one tenth the population of the US, so I recommend setting your Canada budgets to be at least one tenth of the budget for your US campaigns. Although clickthrough rates in Canada are higher which leads to a proportionally higher number of clicks, CPCs tend to be lower, so those two cost-influencing metrics ultimately balance each other out.

So what you are you waiting for? Enhance your ROI today and get those Canadian campaigns live! Check out this handy Microsoft Advertising Community entry for step-by-step instructions on creating Canadian ad groups in adCenter. Once you have a French part of your website built out, give me a call and I'll help you set up some campagnes en français :)

Don't just take my word for it. Check out these adCenter Canada case studies and read about how Microsoft adCenter helped these advertisers reach their target consumers and boost ROI:

FrontierPC.com adCenter Canada case study
Stapleton's Great Adventure Company adCenter Canada case study
Clearly Contacts adCenter Canada case study

Yours in the Great White North,

Catherine

Microsoft Advertising Partners with Microsoft's Internet Enforcement Team to Crack Down on Click Fraud

Brian Boland - MSFT — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:41:00 GMT

Over the last year Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement team has been involved in a comprehensive investigation regarding a click fraud scheme affecting online advertisements related to auto insurance and the online role-playing game, World of Warcraft. Earlier today we publicly filed a civil suit in the Western District Court of Washington against the three believed perpetrators - Eric Lam, his brother Gordon Lam and their mother Melanie Suen. More information on the investigation and filing can be found here on the Microsoft on the Issues blog. We think it's important to be open and transparent in sharing the information about this filing, because it is a great example of how we as an industry can work together to tackle these issues to better protect advertisers and consumers and an opportunity to send a clear message that we won't tolerate fraud on our networks.

In cases like this, we sometimes get questions about how ad networks like Microsoft can distinguish legitimate click traffic from fraud. We can't disclose all of the ways we do this of course - we don't want to go giving fraudsters a roadmap for how to evade detection - but here is a visual that helps provide an example of one of the many ways our Traffic Quality team can look at click traffic behavior to distinguish legitimate clicks from automated clicks.

Origin of automated clicks: this graph is a visual representation of the IP source patterns of the click traffic observed in this case. Note the clusters of sources, which indicates automated traffic behavior. "Normal" IP traffic would be more randomly distributed across the Internet.

Updated 6/22/09 to add:

Below is a typical graphic representation of normal non-clickfraud activity. Genuine traffic will generally lump together into a single sphere as the IP addresses themselves are randomized and lack commonality amongst themselves. The only association these IP addresses have with one another is the search term entered into the search engine (which is depicted in the middle).

Thank you,

Brian Boland

Introducing Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:46:00 GMT

Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of Microsoft Advertising Intelligence out of beta! Formerly called the adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel, Advertising Intelligence is now available in the US, UK, France, and Canada (English data only). This...(read more)

I Scream for Ice Cream (and Engagement Mapping)

Libby Thomas - MSFT — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:45:00 GMT

What is Engagement Mapping?

Imagine that you’re sitting in your garden on a hot sunny day reading a magazine. You turn the page and see an advert for a very tempting looking ice-cream. The radio station that you’re listening to blares out an advert for the same frozen treat. You head inside to get your suntan lotion and switch on your laptop. There it is again, screaming at you from your homepage. It’s too much. You chuck on your flip flops, head to the corner shop and hand over £1.50 to the cashier in exchange for your very own sorbet.

Traditionally, all the credit for your acquisition would be given to the place where the money changed hands (the corner shop) even though your purchase was clearly influenced by print, radio and online media.

When it comes to online media, we know that the final click accounts for just 6% of the interactions that the customer makes during their buying cycle. Advertisers may therefore be attributing 100% credit to just 6% of interactions. Thanks to revolutionary thought leadership, you now have the opportunity to analyse and credit every digital touch point and exposure in the lead up to a conversion. This, in a (gelato covered) nutshell, is engagement mapping!

What are the Benefits of Engagement Mapping?

1. Engagement mapping allows advertisers to attribute value to all touch points upstream of a conversion, and to optimise accordingly. This will enable you to reward all publishers/creative that have ‘engaged’ with the consumer.

2. Engagement mapping offers you the flexibility to align your campaign reporting to your online strategy.

3. Consolidating all of your data and reporting in one place via engagement mapping can also help you to make your advertising campaigns more efficient and effective.

How Can You Use Engagement Mapping?

The Atlas Institute (the research and education arm of Microsoft Advertising) can help any advertiser wanting to map, analyse and optimise all of the engagements in their campaign. For more information, visit the engagement mapping website and check out the advertising site if you’d like to get in touch or set up engagement mapping.

Thanks a lot for reading – I’m off to get a ’99!

Libby

It’s Official – Bing is Available for All

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Today’s the day! If you haven’t tried Bing yet, check it out at www.bing.com . Over on the Bing blog , Whitney writes: “With Bing, we are focused on helping you complete tasks faster by presenting better organized and more relevant content...(read more)

Bing and adCenter Advertisers – Q & A

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:35:00 GMT

Excitement about the launch of Bing is growing, and we’ve heard quite a few questions from folks about the impact of the new decision engine on advertiser campaigns. So, we thought a post with a few FAQs about what you can expect from Bing was in...(read more)

Preview Bing: the new search experience from Microsoft

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Last week, the Microsoft search team announced plans for a new search service called Bing. Starting today, searchers around the world can try out a preview of the new experience at www.bing.com and on June 3rd, it will be fully deployed for everyone....(read more)

adCenter Community Now Microsoft Advertising Community

Chris Norred - MSFT — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:04:00 GMT

As you may have noticed, we've redesigned and renamed our online community Web site. All of your forum posts and all of the blog posts that you've used, along with all the recognition points that you've accumulated by participating in the...(read more)

Announcing the New Search Brand from Microsoft: Bing

Carolyn Miller - MSFT — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:33:00 GMT

Wow, have the rumors been flying lately about Microsoft’s new search service! Well, we’re excited to report that today at the All Things Digital conference, Steve Ballmer announced the impending arrival of Bing. Bing is a new kind of search...(read more)