pubCenter Blog

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

2010-03-13T01:37:59Z

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”

2010-03-13T01:04:00Z

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.”

Monetization Excellence Director Leading Course in Yield Management Best Practices

2010-02-26T23:27:00Z

James Deaker, director of publisher monetization excellence for Microsoft, will be leading a course for publishers March 25th in New York at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. He will be sharing best practices on pricing and inventory management.

At Microsoft, James leads a team that identifies best practices for monetizing Microsoft’s own web properties, such as MSN, and shares these with other publishing teams working on other Microsoft properties.

This area of business is becoming known as “yield management” and it’s important for publishers as you seek to sell more impressions, but also to sell impressions at the optimum rate and maximize your revenue. Most of our pubCenter BETA users have multiple sources of revenue, including direct sales and display advertising, the focus of James’ session.

The goal of the session will be to help publishers monetize sites more effectively. James will provide an overview of best practices for product definition, inventory forecasting, rate card development and pricing policies. The session will help you gain an understanding of the current state-of-the-art techniques, as well as analytical skills for improving the revenue from your site.

To learn more or register: March 25 – Best Practices in Yield Management – Taught by James Deaker, director of Microsoft Advertising Monetization Excellence.

pubCenter Beta Users: Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Agreement Cleared

2010-02-18T22:27:00Z

pubCenter beta participants were sent e-mail today with info about the progress with the Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Alliance. Read Microsoft VP Darren Huston's Thoughts on the Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Alliance and read the update from Carolyn on the adCenter Blog. Visit the Search Alliance site at www.searchalliance.com for answers to FAQs and additional detail. Thank you for using the community,

-Chris

Community Program Manager

Updates to the pubCenter BETA in the new release

2009-11-09T22:43:00Z

The release announced today on the adCenter platform includes a host of feature updates in response to customer feedback. While adCenter users get the most dramatic new features, our pubCenter beta testers will also notice some changes in the self-service web site.

The first thing you will notice is the pubCenter beta now provides Windows Live ID sign-in. If you have been visiting the site infrequently, you might have needed help with your password from time to time. Now, Windows Live ID handles your password. You can reset it using the secret answer or e-mail process link on any Windows Live ID Sign-in page.

When you next sign in, follow the steps to associate your pubCenter ID with your Windows Live ID. If you need a new Windows Live ID, you can get one quickly at https://signup.live.com

The move to Windows Live ID also makes it easier for users to participate in our online community. . Register for the private forums by following the instructions in the pubCenter beta help documentation: Register for the pubCenter community.

Then you can participate in the forums, asking questions of our most experienced beta users without having to sign in with a new password.

You’ll also see a new design for reporting. Your feedback from discussions in our community shaped these changes, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on them.

Message Center

We’re especially excited to announce the message center. Now, you’ll get updated alerts about your account, news about the beta, and FAQs about pubCenter, all within the website UI. It’s a tremendous convenience to have this content just a click away – and we’ll continue to add helpful advice from the pubCenter BETA team, and from other testers who participate in the community.

These updates bring us closer to many of our goals, but we understand there is still a lot of work to be done. We appreciate all the input and feedback we’ve received and the persistent contributions of our beta community.

-Chris

pubCenter advertiser site bidding—questions and answers to how you can use advertiser site bidding to try and improve your business.

2009-07-21T19:16:00Z

An excellent post was developed on site bidding, which generated some conversation and questions. Advertiser site bidding, a relatively new feature in pubCenter, provides a great opportunity for publishers to promote their site to advertisers, allowing advertisers to bid directly on their property. Here are some common questions/answers to help explain advertiser site bidding.

So, how do you see advertiser site bidding helping your business?

Q: What is site bidding?

A: Site Bidding is a way for publishers to realize more revenue by allowing advertisers to bid directly on their site. We have re-architected our network so that participation in the network means that you are visible to our advertisers. Advertisers can then use the Publisher Placement Performance report to see their performance on your site. In order for advertisers to bid directly on your site, they must be willing to bid higher and they must maintain relevancy to your site and to your advertiser exclusion preferences.

Q: Why should I use site bidding?

A: Site Bidding gives publishers a mechanism to create greater demand and increase yield for their site by allowing advertisers to bid directly on their websites. Site bidding means that advertisers are willing to bid more to appear on websites that perform well and/or are content-rich with audiences that match advertiser demand.

Q: How do I participate in site bidding?

A: When you participate in the pubCenter Beta program, you are automatically opted-in to Site Bidding. Publishers have the option to opt-out through the user interface.

Q: What if I am a new site or new to pubCenter?

A: All publishers who participate in the pubCenter Beta program are automatically opted-in to Site Bidding.

Q: How will advertisers find me?

A: Advertisers review their Publisher Placement Performance report, from that report they can find your site. They can search for your site through the adCenter user interface and select it and place a bid.

Q: What is the impact on ad relevance? What safeguards are in place to ensure that the ads served to my site are relevant?

A: Site Bidding does not have an impact on the current safeguards for ad relevance.

Q: How does site bidding work with existing filters that I have applied to my account?

A: Site bidding honors all existing filters.

Q: What if I don't want a specific advertiser to bid on my site?

A: Advertiser exclusions will continue to work in the same way.

How was your OOBE? Program Manager testing the scenario: pubCenter beta onboarding for a new publisher using non-MSFT blogging tools

2009-07-01T23:41:00Z

As a member of the pubCenter team from day one, it was embarrassing to not own a website till last week. Now, as a new blogger, I’ve just started showing beautiful pubCenter ads on my personal blog: http://micksalot.blogspot.com/. Impressive how I’ve already graduated to become an unabashed blogger happy to gain page rank benefits from the forum, no?

My non-Microsoft blogging software (Blogger) integrates with pubCenter to receive targeted ads through an AdRotator (to test various ad unit look and feel styles). It worked seamlessly and I was up and running within an hour. I ran into a couple of editorial issues but rest assured we’re already working on smoothing them out so you won’t have to face them! However, as a longtime pubCenter employee, I already know every nook and cranny in the system. I’m keen to hear what your on-boarding experience (or in the offline world: OOBE-out of box experience) was like. For most customers a new product means spending lots of time confused and/or overwhelmed around how to achieve their simple goal (in this case: just give me an ad!). On the other hand, if your first 5 minutes with pubCenter was exciting and straightforward, like getting a shiny new toy in the mail, even better—I’d love to hear that.

So, please tell me, what was your first interaction with pubCenter like? Were you able to signup and get into the web site easily? Once in, were you confused? Or did you find it easy creating an ad unit for your site with your ad serving preferences? Did you have any trouble getting the ads to show up, viewing/interpreting ad performance, or getting paid? My goal is to understand the first major glitch you hit in those first few days with pubCenter and went: how in the world can I accomplish this simple task? Please let us know so we can make the system more intuitive and user friendly for you!

Microsoft pubCenter browser compatibility with the UI and ad serving

2009-06-18T16:49:00Z

The other day I was speaking with my sister and our conversation was on her son and his eating habits. You see my nephew is 2 years old and he thinks everything goes together with ice cream, or at least he used to think that way until a trip to the doctor. Sure sprinkles and ice cream are his favorite, but he will tell you “ Docta say no nuts. No nuts til 3. Spikles only.” This made me realize that no matter how much we want things to go together, they are not always compatible.

Lately there has been some discussion regarding pubCenter (BETA) and browser compatibility. Do keep in mind that pubCenter supports ad delivery in the majority of Java Script enabled browsers. However the pubCenter UI, is currently not supported in Chrome, Safari or Opera, which compose roughly 1.6% of all browsers in use*. This means when using these browsers you may experience sign-in problems. For best results, when accessing the pubCenter UI, it is best to use Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 or Firefox 3.0.

What has been your browser experience with pubCenter? Have you come across any UI features that don’t seem compatible?

Thanks for your thoughts! Now who wants some ice cream?

-Harlan

*Forrester Research, 2008 Browser Adoption

Microsoft pubCenter Properties – what are they?

2009-06-13T01:36:00Z

A pubCenter property is an entity that represents a website or parts of a website. For example, assume your website is www.contoso.com and you wish to receive ads on the website, the first step to do is to create a pubCenter property as below. Note that you are able to specify a web site name and URL. When you hit the Save button, you have created your first property!

Once saved, if you navigate into your property, you will see the following. If you have been in the pubCenter pilot from before the Spring 2009 release, you will have been accustomed to seeing the property’s status as Pending. Our internal support teams then got a list of all pending properties, scrubbed them for verifying our Editorial guidelines and then approved/rejected them. This resulted in the customer having to wait up to a day to start seeing ads on your site. Who wants to wait! So, with the Spring 2009 upgrade, all newly created properties automatically enter an “Auto-approved” state. This means, you can immediately create ad units, copy them on your website and start seeing ads within minutes. And start making money!

Note that there is a reason we ask you to still create properties. As an ad network, we take pride in the (as yet) small set of good quality publishers we have corralled. We are fully aware that a quality publisher network brings in the best ad inventory. And bringing in the best ad inventory brings in more high quality publishers. As part of this effort to safeguard our network quality, we are investing in quality controls on the properties you create. So, while we are enabling our publisher customers to have instant gratification through auto-approved properties --- at the same time we are continuing to review and eliminate properties that do not meet our Editorial guidelines.

With a quality network, all of us win!

Competitive Ad Filters – What? Why?

2009-05-20T19:27:00Z

Related Links:
Competitive Ad Filters - What? Why?
-Limits
-How To
-Types of

What do they do?
Competitive Ad Filters, or just Filters for short, are the mechanism pubCenter gives you the publisher to block ads.

Why would I use them?
The original intent of filters is there in the formal name for them: Competitive Ad Filters. They were created as a way for you to block advertisements from your competitors. For example, if you were a florist, you wouldn’t want to see ads on your site from other florists in your area.

This may still be your primary usage of them. However, as you probably have already discovered many publishers are using them to block ads that they don’t want to see on their site or aren’t perceived as relevant. For example, if I was running a food related website, I might choose to block ads about cars because I don’t think they are relevant. Or, I might block weight loss ads because I don’t think my users of my site want to see those ads, even if they might be relevant to my food web site.

Will filters affect my revenue?
The short answer is “Maybe.”

The long answer is it really depends and there isn’t any way to know until you try it. If you don’t have any competition that you are trying to block and all you want to do is maximize your revenue then you shouldn’t need to create any filters. To quote Kevin McCabe, “Microsoft is building a new marketplace for both publishers and advertisers with the goal of helping publishers achieve competitive yield and helping advertisers see better performance from their ads.” The marketplace can’t be a success unless we are trying to make you more money.

By adding filters you are reducing the number of advertisements that are available for PubCenter to pick from for your site. If any of these are ads that we would have chosen to show on your site and that your users are likely to have clicked on, then it could be reducing your revenue. I say “could” because it still depends on the rate your users would click on the ad, how much the advertiser is paying for the click, how often we would show the ad, how those metrics compare with similar metrics for other ads, and other factors.

On the other hand, PubCenter is still in beta, there is the remote possibility that we aren’t choosing a good value ad to show on your site. Adding a filter to block this type of ad would have the potential to increase your revenue. But rest assured we still have the same goal as you: maximizing your revenue. We aren’t making any money from the ads on your site unless you are making money from them.

pubCenter Publishers: Good news - Advertisers can now bid on your placements

2009-05-20T18:59:00Z

In the latest version of pubCenter, we have introduced a concept which enables the advertisers to bid on your placements (adUnits) and run of site (several locations within a site). When you create adUnits and properties, pubCenter will auto-magically manage the direct bids on the properties, no matter which ad units you place on each property. And if the check box is checked, then it means that you’d like Advertisers, who are customers of Microsoft AdCenter, to be able to bid directly on your properties. Which means if your blog or property is popular enough, there can be advertisers who’ll set bids in terms of maximum CPCs on your placements or run of site and therefore get a chance to participate in the auction of ads during delivery. This checkbox enables discoverability of your website and placements by the advertiser community.

Here’s a screenshot of the placements that the advertisers can see if they search for my property:

I have two adUnits – one with display type text/image (180 x 150) and the other text/image/rich (468 x 60).

So, as it should be clear by now, it’s better to keep this check box turned on since it can help you earn a lot more :)

- Juveria

Competitive Ad Filters – Limits

2009-05-20T18:51:00Z

I need more global filters

As I’m sure many of you have encountered, you want to have more than 50 keywords or 50 URLs as part of your global filter. There isn’t any direct way in which to achieve this, however, there is a work around.

You can create several normal filters (the non-global filter variety) and fill them up with your keywords and URLs that you wish to block.

Then construct a custom channel. Select all of your ad units and the normal filters you want to act like “global” filters. This will then cause those normal filters to be applied to all the impressions for the selected ad units. If you create new ad units you will need to remember to associate them with this custom channel, so choosing a good name for this custom channel that will remind you to do so is important. In addition, if you have multiple accounts you will need to create these filters and channels for each account.

Limits - # of Filters

There are 3 limits that apply to filters.

1. You are allowed 50 keywords and 50 URLs per filter

2. You are allowed up to 10 filters per account

3. You are allowed up to 200 keywords and 200 URLs per ad unit impression

If the third one is a little confusing, go back and read the section entitled “Types of filters”, specifically the part about normal filters. This 200 keyword and 200 URL limit includes the global filter, all filters associated to a channel associated to an ad unit, and all filters associated to a channel passed in the ad call (JavaScript). If this limit is exceeded any keywords or URLs past the 200 item limit are ignored. If you cross the limit without channels past in the ad call, then the ad unit management page should display a warning icon in the “# Channels” column (linked to the help system) for the ad units crossing the limit.

If this occurs you should reduce the number of URLs or Keywords associated with the ad unit(s). Otherwise, some of your keywords or URLs will be ignored and you may receive ads that you intended to block.

If you are crossing the 200 item limit via channels passed in the ad call you will receive no warning or indication that you have crossed the limit. As such, you should be careful to not cross the limit. Crossing the limit, however, will not cause any problems with rendering of the ads, but rather may just allow some ads you wanted to block through to your page.

Competitive Ad Filter – How can I filter?

2009-05-20T18:47:00Z

Related links

pubCenter provides for filtering ads via two different mechanisms:

· URL

· Keyword

Blocking by URL will match against both the landing page of the ad and the display URL of the ad. If either URL matches, then the ad should not be shown. This is helpful when you have a specific site that you are looking to block. For example, if I’m running a winery site I could block ads going to CohoWinery.com. The URLs can be entire domains (e.g. contoso.com), subdomains (something.contoso.com), or pages within a site (e.g. contoso.com/somesubsection). URLs should be entered one per line up to 50 URLs per filter.

Blocking by keyword will match against the keywords bid for the ad, as well as the keywords from the landing page of the ad. This is helpful when you have a set of ads that you want to block. For example, if I were running a cooking website and I want to block car ads, I could block the keyword “car”. Keywords can be either single words (e.g. car) or phrases (e.g. brake pedal). Keywords should be entered one per line up to 50 keywords per filter.

Types of Competitive Ad Filters

2009-05-20T18:43:00Z

Related Links:
Competitive Ad Filters - What? Why?
-Limits
-How To
-Types of

Within pubCenter there are two types of filters:

· Filters (I’ll call these “normal filters” to help differentiate whether I’m referring to filters in general or this type).

· Global Filter

Let’s start with the global filter since it is easier to explain and understand. First off, you are allowed to only have one of them. The reason for that is its intended usage. When you create a global filter, it applies to all your ad units. Global filters will appear in red on the grid screen for filters and indicate “global” in the scope column.

With normal filters it’s a little more complicated. To make them active they need to be associated with a channel. When you attach a filter to a channel, any ad unit impression that is associated with that channel will have the filter applied. That’s a bit technical so I’ll try to break it down a little bit.

When you put an ad unit on your website and then view a page of your website with the ad unit on it, that particular view of the page is an impression for that ad unit.

That impression can be associated with a channel in three different ways:

1. URL Channel – If the ad unit impression happens on a site that matches against a URL Channel, then that URL Channel gets associated and all its filters will be applied to that ad unit impression.

2. Custom Channel statically – If the ad unit is associated with a custom channel via either the ad unit edit page, or the custom channel edit page, then every impression for that ad unit will be associated with that custom channel, effecting all the custom channel’s filters.

3. Custom Channel dynamically – pubCenter provides for passing channels at impression time via JavaScript. This is visible if you check the “Include all the appearance settings in the code” check box on step 3 of the Ad Unit edit page. You can then edit the “microsoft_adunit_channelids” variable to contain a comma-separated list of custom channel IDs. When you do this, then when that script is executed on your page, the list will be passed up to our servers during ad rendering. Those custom channels will them be associated with the ad unit impression, causing all their filters to be active for the impression. This “dynamic” channel feature is something that deserves its own blog post so I’ll save that for later.

The pubCenter Spring 2009 Upgrade is Here!

2009-05-15T23:38:00Z

The pubCenter Spring Upgrade is nearly complete, and we're pleased to fill you in on the new features you'll see when you sign in over the weekend. These new features are designed to:

· Create higher demand and increase yield for our publishers by allowing advertisers to bid directly on your site.

· Expand your access to advertisers using animated GIF and Flash ad formats.

· Help you optimize performance by comparing different ad units in the same page space.

· Improve usability with new help features.

Look for more detailed blog posts about these features in the coming days.

We are continuing to build a new marketplace for both publishers and advertisers with the goal of helping publishers achieve competitive yield and helping advertisers see better performance from their ads. This upgrade is another step in that direction.

If you are interested in beta testing, or know some US-based web site owners who would like to test the beta, sign-up here: http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher

We are looking forward to hearing what you think about our improvements and, if you haven’t done so already follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest pubCenter news, tips and tricks.