Search Engine Monkeying

Happy Birthday AdCenter.

Microsoft AdCenter is turning one year old this week and I think it would be a good time to look at the search engine from and advertising standpoint once again. If you’ve read any of my previous posts on AdCenter you probably know that I am disappointed with the experience from an advertiser’s viewpoint (that’s putting it mildly). Recently, my random rejected keyword emails have dwindled to a small trickle and maybe I’m feeling adventurous but I’m thinking of tackling AdCenter again. I’d like to see it the advertising interface is still sporting Times-New Roman font of if they’ve upgraded it for the 21st century (at least there are no animated gifs on the site that I know of). All-in-all, the most aggravating thing is I know there is a way to crack AdCenter but I haven’t made it work.

I guess I’ll start off with what I like about AdCenter. First, they used a similar Campaign -> AdGroup(Order) -> Keyword and Ad structure as Google. Yahoo finally adopted the same structure this year in February and it seems to be what separates the big boys from the third tier. Second, I think it’s interesting how Microsoft was the first company to introduce demographic targeting (amongst the big three). I also like using Microsoft Live (their search engine). I think the engine is aesthetically pleasing, I like the features, and the structure is familiar without seeming to overly familiar (AOL and Yahoo). Lastly, I think Microsoft Live’s traffic is good traffic with real consumers that visit my sites and I get a high click through rate from ads running on their search engine.

That brings us to the first problem with Microsoft’s search engine, there isn’t enough traffic. An article in the Seattle Times called “Microsoft’s sophisticated ad system has some catching up to do” further seems to express the same dissatisfaction I have. Second, Microsoft AdCenter’s customer service is ridiculous. Maybe I’m spoiled by Chris, Mollie, and Rachel, my Google account reps but it seems nearly impossible to get bulk changes made or find answers to questions. There is just a lack of accountability at AdCenter and it is easy for advertisers to slip through the cracks.

The main thing that bugs me, and I don’t really want to get into it now (you can read my other post), is Microsoft AdCenter keyword rejections. I’m probably being too harsh in my critique of AdCenter. They are just trying to slim down Orders (AdGroups) of irrelevant keywords and increase CTR and conversions. However, as noted in the SearcEngineWatch blog, “Is Microsoft Driving Low-Quality Traffic to its Search Ads?“, recent changes in Microsoft’s term’s of service disclosed that “Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your advertisements”. In other words, the business owner can’t assess their own relevancy to keywords but AdCenter can?

I don’t know if I should weigh in on the second disclosure in the SearchEngineWatch article pertaining to AdCenter using IntelliTXT content advertising to drive traffic to the AdCenter/Windows Live Search SERP. If that’s what Microsoft needs to do to drum-up traffic, that’s what they need to do. I’d be pretty pissed if my ads started showing up directly in IntelliTXT without my knowledge.

Like I said, I’m going to give AdCenter another chance. If there is any truth to this rumor of Microsoft buying Yahoo, I would be overjoyed if they killed AdCenter and replaced it with Panama. In lieu of that, I think I’m just going to have to spend more time figuring AdCenter out. If I crack it, you’ll be the first to know.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Advertisers using MSN AdCenter should be aware of an error that could be scaring away your business.

The AdCenter conversion code used to track sales from MSN Live creates the above error message when viewed in Mozilla Firefox. MSN knows about the error and as of yet has refused to create a patch that would prevent the error message from occurring.

If you are using the conversion code to track purchases, more than likely, the error message will be little more than an inconvenience for your customers. But, if the Site owner is tracking actions such as an email signup, the MSN message could confuse the consumer and the site may lose integrity because most users won’t realize that the error cannot be fixed by the website administrator.

I also believe that error is interfering with Google conversion verification. Personally, I’m stripping it out of my sites and may replace it later when MSN has a patch.

Popularity: 13% [?]

MSN’s AdLab contains demos for all new Microsoft search and advertising technology. Here is a brief outline of what is currently available:

Demographic Prediction: predict a persons age, gender, and other demographic data by their online behavior. This will be really cool for bidding to your targeted audience when all search engines use demographic data.

Sensitive Webpage Detecting: Detects whether a webpage contains sensitive data.

Video Hyperlink: Creates a dynamic hyperlink over online video that can be clicked on by the user. This is sweet. I think eventually this will be it’s own channel and nearly as influencial as SEM.

Social Video: Adds and shares comments on video frames. Another cool tool to add value to video, which, we will then advertise on.

Content Categorization: Classifies websites into categories. I think people will eventually use this for advertising on a range of site-targeted websites.

Search Funnel: Analyze and visualize user search sequences in the form of a funnel. Bid on keywords near the end of the funnel to increase ROI.

Keyword Forecast: Forecasts the impressions and predicts demographic data using one or more search terms. I think I would use this for product development and deciding if I should enter a market.

Seasonal Keyword Forecast: Forecasts the seasonal patterns of search queries. This would be perfect for making proactive changes to your bids based on predicted increases and decreases in traffic.

Keyword Mutilation Detection: Detect frequent misspellings or alternative spellings of the same keyword in search query logs. A perfect tool for expanding keyword lists. This would be perfect for expanding into really competitive markets.

Search Result Clustering: Cluster a set of documents, such as search results, into semantically related groups in real time.

Keyword Group Detection: Given a word or phrase, find a set of similar words. Looks like you could use this to create AdGroups/Orders.

Detecting Online Commercial Intention: Predicts the intention of the user to purchase based on search queries and recently visited pages. Another great tool for bidding.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I noticed that MSN used a similar setup for suggesting related links that Yahoo uses.

I typed in Gout into the search bar and received a list of additional searches that MSN provides to help users.

You can use the same method I wrote about in Yahoo Link Network to bid on the exact match to the keywords and dominate the search result ads.

Popularity: 12% [?]

LemmeFind

I found this really cool tool to compare all the major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and gathers the results. The site actually shows the SERP so you can see exactly where your ads are showing up on each page.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Everyone probably all ready knows how to do this but I thought I would share it anyway.

1) Upload a test campaign, Order (AdCenter’s equivalent to an AdGroup), some keywords, and some ads.

2) Second, download the campaign from AdCenter.

3) Format your campaigns to match the semantics of the AdCenter download

4) Lastly, upload the new document into AdCenter.

Sure beats reading MSN’s crazy technical help files and documentation.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Usually, I don’t like to vent and would rather come up with solutions then complain about problems but I’m just fed up with MSN AdCenter.A while ago I uploaded a variety of campaigns into there system and that went well enough. The structure was similar to Google. The import went well enough, the mechanical part of the experience. From there it just went DOWNHILL.

Slowly, my keywords started to get rejected. Not all of the keywords. If there were 10 keywords in an Order, then five might be rejected. The reason they were getting rejected was the website copy. Why didn’t they reject ALL the keywords in the Order? Why only five? It doesn’t make any sense?

I spent some time checking out their editorial guidelines and these are some of the conclusions I drew that may have affected the account:

1) The first reason they gave was that the page contained “military references”. The site was about attacking weight loss and the only sentence that might have been flagged was a metaphor.

2) Second, there may have been embedded <div> tag, which to the untrained eye, may have looked like a pop-up. It was a coupon for free shipping that popped up in the corner of the page, hovering over the text, for new customers.

I would call up and talk to a representative about the problem and they would agree with me that there was nothing wrong with the Order or copy. But then, AdCenter’s appeal process is just a mess. You’d have to have an Account Rep email you because they didn’t have an email contact on their site or an online upload form (I think they had online contact form but no file upload). Then after a week of no action, I’d call them and they’d say they had never received the file.

All in all, the process is just frustrating and it seems that everyday, I’ll get a message that a couple more keywords have been deactivated. I’m spending between 15k and 25k a day at Google and I can’t even get an account rep at MSN.

On they other hand, I think that most advertisers are as frustrated as me. Competition is really low and the ads have a really good click through rate. I’m going to try to continue to work with them, but AdCenter is just a huge pain.

It’s interesting to think that MSN created their own barrier to entry for advertisers by having such a messed up and obstinate advertising process.

Popularity: 14% [?]