Search results matching tag 'Advertisers'

Digital Display Advertising Case Study: Windows 7 Launch

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:42:00 GMT

We’ve just posted some online insight into the digital campaign our consumer marketing teams in the UK and France used to approach the launch of Windows 7.

The campaign ran across a myriad of different properties including the Microsoft Media Network and was designed to promote the launch, raise awareness and favourability, and drive recommendation and purchase intent.

Top line results:

In the UK, exposure to Windows 7 online advertising increased product awareness by 8 percentage points to 93% and delivered a 2 percentage point rise in purchase intent to 68%.
In France, the Windows 7 MSN channel increased brand favourability by 5 percentage points to 66%, with 66% of visitors saying they would recommend the site.

Check it out for yourself and download the full report: Windows 7 Digital Advertising Case Study

Thanks,

Mel

dmexco 2010 – Hear Marc Bresseel Speak in Cologne

Mel Carson - MSFT — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:07:00 GMT

On the 16th of September our VP for Global Agencies at Microsoft Advertising – Marc Bresseel – will be speaking at the dmexco Conference in Germany’s beautiful city of Cologne.

His session will take place in the dmexco Congress Hall at 12.15pm-1pm, and he’ll be talking about multiscreen advertising.

From the agenda:

Navigating a chaotic consumer landscape: Can multi-screen campaigns break down the barriers?

Incremental fragmentation of the consumer landscape means that it’s no longer enough to deliver a message that resonates on the TV screen, pc screen or mobile screen. To truly connect with the consumer your message must resonate on multiple screens. So how many screens does it take and how do you break through to create compelling experiences that engage consumers emotionally? Join Marc Bresseel to review examples of multi-screen approaches that are delivering impactful results and why.

I’ve had the opportunity to interview Marc a couple of times in Cannes and about his Global Agencies Team.

His wealth of experience in media, coupled with his compelling presentation style, will certainly add to what is set to be an engaging 45 minutes of insight into the future of advertising across multiple devices.

Follow our Germany team on Twitter and check out our German Advertising site for more information in their local language.

Cheers,

Mel

Visit the Transition Center on the Microsoft Advertising Site for FAQs, Feature Comparisons and More

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Now that the paid search transition announcement has been made, no doubt you have some questions about what the upcoming changes mean for you as a PPC advertiser. Whether you're new to Microsoft adCenter or a seasoned veteran, you're sure to find some helpful information in the Learning Center section of the main Microsoft Adveritisng site, most notably in the Transition Center.

In addition to general information on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, you’ll find guidance on transitioning your campaigns, as well as information about editorial guidelines, adCenter features, and timelines. I'd recommend starting with the frequently asked questions to see if your concerns are addressed there first.

If you have any questions or concerns that you can't find an answer to, you have several options for getting in touch with us. You can...

Pick up the phone or send an email to our support staff
Leave a comment below
Post a question in our forums
Tweet your question to @adCenter

We're here to help and hope to make this transition period as seamless as we possibly can for you, so please do let us know if you're looking for information that's not available in the Transition Center and we'll do our best to track down the answer for you.

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Maybe It’s Time to Start Listening to Each Other?

Mark Young - MSFT — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:34:00 GMT

One thing I’ve realized lately is there is a lot of talking going on in the industry but not a lot of listening.

And worst of all, a lot of talk about tactics and not a lot of strategic dialogue.

Maybe I should just stop this blog now and get to the point; we need more dialogue about Marketing and Marketing Strategy and less about Digital Vs. Traditional, Display Vs. Search, Social Vs. Earned Media, etc.

I’ve started to do meetings with customers with no slides (hard for a Microsoft guy to not show off the cool stuff in PowerPoint 2010) and encourage the dialogue of what they’re really trying to do with their customers and not just tactics.

So, I’ll stop talking!

Send me some feedback…what are the strategic marketing issues we should be talking about as an industry!!

I’m listening,

Mark

General Manager of Marketing at Microsoft Advertising

Talking B2B Social Media ROI at SES Hong Kong 2010

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:45:00 GMT

Just a quick note to say I’ll be travelling down to Asia for Search Engine Strategies Hong Kong the week after next.

It’s the first time the event has been held there, so should be a fascinating immersion into all the online marketing activities in the region.

I’ve been honoured to be asked to speak on the keynote discussion panel on the second day – Tuesday 14th September.

From the agenda:

Keynote Panel: Increasing ROI through B2B Lead Generation

For the first time, three major B2B media players will sit on one panel to share their insights on B2B lead generation and vertical search in the world's fastest growing region.

Tactical approaches for online lead generation.

Strategies for B2B vertical search marketing.

How to convert online leads for offline business.

Learn from big search marketing advertisers; what are their search marketing and strategy plans?

The moderator will be Eddie Choi from the SES Advisory Board & Managing Director of Frontiers Digital.

On the panel with me will be Peter Zapf, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Global Sources and Matthias Baur, Corporate e-Business Development Director, Reed Exhibitions.

We’ve been asked to present for 15 minutes so I’ll be talking about our team, how we started in the social media space, how we track ROI and delve a little into the content, tips and best practice from our Social Media White Paper (340KB PDF)

Check out the full agenda, and if you’re going to be at the event, let me know and be sure to say hi!

Cheers

Mel

Yahoo! Paid Search Transition to Microsoft adCenter On Track

David Pann - MSFT — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:00:00 GMT

This week, Yahoo! advertisers can begin transitioning their paid search campaigns to Microsoft adCenter. During the transition, which is on-track for completion by the end of October, advertisers will continue to manage separate accounts on adCenter (serving ads on Bing) and Yahoo! Search Marketing (serving ads on Yahoo! Search). Once the transition is completed, advertisers will operate one single account on Microsoft adCenter that will power search advertising campaigns across Bing and Yahoo!’s combined audience representing 31.6 percent of U.S. search market share.

By combining paid search for Bing and Yahoo!, advertisers will be able to reach the audiences of both search engines, saving time and simplifying their campaigns. A combined Bing and Yahoo! will provide advertisers with a competitive alternative in search advertising, enabling advertisers to reach more than 159 million searchers in the U.S. and 15 million in Canada¹ on Yahoo! Search, Bing and our partners with one ad buy.

Microsoft and Yahoo! will continue to seek input from advertisers as we work to complete the transition. While we expect the paid search transition to be complete by the end of October, and we are on track to reach that goal, we still may consider holding off on the full integration of paid search until 2011 if we feel that the transition will in any way impact the holiday season.

To help you prepare, here are the steps to help make the transition a seamless experience. If you’re an advertiser on …

Yahoo! Search Marketing: Sign-in to your account and click on the adCenter tab to begin transitioning your campaigns into adCenter. From there, you can choose to create a new adCenter account, or indicate that you’d like to use your existing adCenter account. If you have a Yahoo! Account Manager, they will continue to help you through the transition plan you’ve established based on your business needs. Keep in mind that some features in Yahoo! Search Marketing are different than those found in adCenter and other search advertising platforms. Brush up on your knowledge by learning how adCenter features are different.

adCenter: If you have no Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns to transition, you can prepare your adCenter campaigns by optimizing them to run on both Yahoo! Search and Bing in the near future. To get started, use Microsoft Advertising Intelligence to update your keyword list based on the actual queries that searchers are using on Bing, and tailor your bidding strategies by pricing data for keyword-specific metrics such as clicks, impressions, position, click-through rate, and cost per click. If you’re still learning about this time-saving tool, I’d recommend taking a look at these six introductory tutorials or perusing the documentation from the download page.

Regardless of which search platform(s) you’re currently using, as a web site owner, you may find some helpful organic search engine optimization (SEO) resources in the Bing Toolbox; a simplified experience focused on the three key areas of crawl, index, and traffic. If you have additional questions, please continue to work with your existing support contacts and visit the Microsoft Transition Center and Yahoo’s Advertising blog to stay updated with the latest information.

Thank you,

David Pann, General Manager, Microsoft Advertising Search Network

Source:

comScore qSearch (custom) June 2010

Clarifying Base Bids: Enhancing and Optimizing for Position in Microsoft Advertising adCenter

Kim Farmer - MSFT — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Today’s post will define some optimization practices around participation in the auction environment. It’s true that adCenter’s minimum bid is a simple $.05 cost per click (CPC) and does not fluctuate in the auction environment during seasonal or vertically-driven periods of time. That being said, the question remains: how do I ensure that I’m actively participating in the auction environment? We’ll cover three different optimizations tactics in this post that should help define some critical ways of increasing your position while avoiding the “minimum bid” conundrum.

Separate Search and Content

This is an important call out for those of you who are participating in both the search and content networks. The key performance indicators (KPIs) across these two are drastically different, as they encompass two different stages in the sales funnel: browsing and searching. The impression volume, expected click-through rate (CTR), and positions available are drastically different. Because of this, the best practice is to have these separated at the campaign or ad group level so you can easily distinguish performance.

Look at Historical Data

The reporting in adCenter is robust and includes the ability to monitor your position from all levels of campaign structures. The ability to pull an ad group or keyword performance report is at your fingertips; simply make sure you’re looking at the “Avg Position” column. If you aren’t satisfied with your given position:

Take a look at your CTR% and see if you can modify ad copy based on the keywords you’re getting the most traffic on.
Modify or add negative keywords to qualify the traffic and exclude those impressions you don’t want to see (the Search Query report is a great place to start!)
Increase your bids if a specific keyword is working great for you.

Utilize Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI)

MAI is an incredibly powerful tool. It uses adCenter marketplace data, and in this situation, provides some key insights and guidance on the auction itself. For our use today,we’ll look at one key function for gaining insights to adjust your position:

Keyword Monetization: This will give you the KPIs (clicks, impressions, etc.) for your particular keyword set within the adCenter Marketplace. This is not your own data, this is a combination of all performance on a particular keyword.
- Edit your Options - the Options button allows you to modify the queries your running, you can choose a particular match type or position, or pull all match types and positions.
- Enter your Keywords - simply paste or enter your keyword list into Excel (you can pull either the entire list, or a small subset if you want to be granular).
- Highlight & Run - from here, highlight your keyword list and select the Monetization – Search button.
- Explore - the data presented here is robust – you can get a clear idea of what the expected bid, paid CPC, CTR% and available clicks/impressions over the last 30 days historically. NOTE: Please use this data directionally only; it does not take into account your own ad/keyword performance.

When looking for optimizing your position, closely align your optimization decisions with your ROI goals. If particular groups of keywords or ads are working well for you,that’s a great starting point in increasing the traffic. If you have ad groups that are performing around your ROI goals, you can use MAI or performance reports to adjust to find the perfect mix for your business.

Remember: a $.05 doesn’t guarantee significant traffic, you could be missing out on a lot of opportunity. Take a look at the functionality in MAI, run a few performance reports to see where you stand, and optimize away!

Best of luck,

Kim

Scheduled Maintenance May Delay Reports for Up to 24 Hours

Tina Kelleher - MSFT — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Due to scheduled maintenance, our reports may be delayed for up to 24 hours starting Saturday Aug 28, 2010 7:00 AM PDT. 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.

Conversion Tracking: 5 Improvements Scheduled for the Fall Release of Microsoft Advertising adCenter

Mary Berk - MSFT — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:00:00 GMT

In the next few weeks, adCenter will be rolling out new conversion and campaign analytics functionality in response to the advanced features that you’ve been asking for. The new analytics functionality will give you better insights that you can use to improve the success of your campaigns and websites.

Here’s a quick overview of what's coming:

Tracking multiple conversion goals. If your site measures numerous types of conversions – such as online purchases, newsletter signups, or product downloads – you’ll be able to measure each of these separately; adCenter will allow you to create up to 6 different conversion goals for each account.
Creation of distinct conversion steps. You might want to measure a number of different stages on the way to a conversion, e.g. an online merchant might want to analyze how close to conversion users typically progress. The online merchant could then identify up to 6 steps – such as product page views, adding an item to a shopping cart, and reading product reviews – and report on these through adCenter.
Tracking of sales and cost-related parameters. If you’ve been wanting to measure how much each conversion is worth to you, you’ll be able to after the fall release of adCenter. Using custom parameters that you pass to adCenter, you’ll be able to track the dollar value of each conversion (if the conversion is a product sale, for example), the cost of shipping and tax, and more.
Segmentation reports. You’ll be able to quickly analyze your conversion reports by features such as gender, age group, and location of users reaching your website from adCenter ads, conversion by traffic source, the distribution channel that converts for you (email, search, display), and much more.
Keyword-level analysis. Develop greater understanding of which keywords are driving the most (or least) conversions for you. Imagine how much you can improve your campaign effectiveness by changing your presence on high-converting keywords! You’ll be able to do other things at the keyword level, too, such as understanding how often one keyword “assists” a conversion on another keyword.

This is just a sampling of what you’ll be able to do with adCenter’s fall release. Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below; we’d love to hear from you!

Mary Berk

Sr. Product Manager, adCenter

Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Teams Visit San Francisco and New York City SEMPO Events

Michael Elmgreen - MSFT — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:00:00 GMT

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance teams were recently invited to present at the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) meetings in San Francisco (7/26) and New York City (8/2). We all enjoyed great food (loved the bacon-wrapped dates, antipasti!), wine and beer before the commencement of the content.

Once we got started, myself and Rob Wilk (National Director, Search Optimization and Strategy, Yahoo!) ran through the vision for the Search Alliance, highlighting key feature differences between Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft Advertising adCenter, and outlined how we feel the deal will unlock significant value for both advertisers and consumers. We also walked through the expected timeline of the transition, covering how Bing would begin to power organic results on Yahoo! (complete as of the publishing of this post), and the upcoming paid search transition, which will allow advertisers to advertise on Yahoo! Search and Bing with one ad buy through adCenter.

As always, we like to leave plenty of time for a robust Q&A with the audience. It is always refreshing to hear perspectives and feedback from all kinds of stakeholders who have skin in the search business.

In the foggy city, we were joined on a panel by Chris Sanger, Director of Product Management at Yahoo!, Johann Garcia, Product Manager, Microsoft Advertising adCenter, and Charlie Longfellow, Senior Manager, Account Management. Chris fielded the lion’s share of product-related questions from a mix of about sixty SEM, SEO, affiliate marketers and other folks in the room. The panel was moderated by Mark Fiske from the Gap.

At Microsoft offices in the vibrant heart of New York City, we took questions on the fly during our presentation. The audience of ninety-nine was lively and upbeat, with more references to Jersey Shore than we expected! Taline Elmekjin and Teresa Elliott from Microsoft’s Search Alliance team were also on hand to engage with our audience after the formal Q&A was over.

Two top questions from coast-to-coast included:

1. Q: What search ad distribution controls will be available after the transition in adCenter?

A: We are currently developing new adCenter features that will help you control search ads distribution in the new unified search marketplace across Yahoo! and Microsoft sites. The new features coming soon to adCenter will allow you to display search ads on the bundle of Yahoo! and Microsoft properties exclusively, on partner sites exclusively, or on the entire combined network (which is the default setting). In addition, you’ll be able to indicate domains and sub domains that you’d like to exclude at both the ad group and campaign levels. These search ad distribution controls are currently in development for a future adCenter upgrade.

2. Q: Will you be helping us with our organic search optimization efforts pre-transition?

A: Bing’s website provides a robust set of materials on search engine optimization (SEO). An SEO webmaster’s toolbox can be found at http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/. It provides webmasters with valuable information on organizing web site content and using non-paying methods, to help improve your site’s ranking in search engine results. We also recommend reviewing the topic Guidelines for successful indexing.

Secondly, The free SEO Toolkit contains detailed analysis and search engine friendly suggestions. Start with the free download, review your website, and make changes fast. Finally, for more information, visit Bing Webmaster Center Help. Follow these steps to search:

Open the Bing Webmaster Center Help page.
Search for information about indexing using the search function at left, or browse the topics provided.

Thanks to SEMPO for inviting us to speak, and to all of our attendees who made these two events such a positive experience.

For more information on the Yahoo!/Microsoft partnership, check out the Search Alliance video.

Michael Elmgreen – Account Executive, Search Agency Sales @michaelelmgreen

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