adCenter Blog Has Moved To - www.adcentercommunity.com: Announcements

The adCenter Blog has moved - www.adcentercommunity.com

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:16:16 GMT

We have moved to:

We're pleased to announce the launch of our new adCenter Community site - www.adcentercommunity.com. Please come see us in our new home and take a moment to update your RSS subscription to our new location, and also come visit us in our discussion forum to ask and answer questions, and share your adCenter experiences and feedback.

adCenter Blog For Advertisers

adCenter Analytics Blog

adCenter API Blog

adCenter Community

We've moved our blog and forums to www.adcentercommunity.com in order to consolidate our community offerings into one place to make it easier to find the info you need - here's more context from our launch email:

The Future of adCenter Community is Here! www.adCenterCommunity.com

The adCenter Community Team is ready to unveil the next evolution of advertiser enablement with the launch of www.adCenterCommunity.com!!

In order to contribute to our credo of delivering world class service, we have been working diligently to deliver an online experience that enables our advertisers through a variety of interactive communication channels. Some of these features include:

· Product/Service specific blogs

· Categorized User Forums

· Multimedia Distribution including video interviews, audio podcasts and training videos

· User profiles

So whether you're an adCenter Advertiser, using adCenter Analytics or developing through the adCenter API, www.adCenterCommunity.com will be the one place to visit for all adCenter updates, news, tips, tricks and best practices.

We've tried to build a community portal that encourages interaction so that not only can you get information, updates and assistance from Microsoft employees, but also from each other, as some of the most knowledgeable users of our products and services are our customers! Be sure to check out our user forums as they grow into a robust resource on everything adCenter and more.

We're excited about delivering a truly unique experience for our advertisers, and hope you find value in the resource as well. As always, feel free to share your feedback and suggestions as we are always looking to improve.

Enjoy!

Jeanie, Carolyn, Jason, Chris & Mel – adCenter Community Team

adExcellence Program Launches In The UK

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:00:45 GMT

We've just announced at Search Engine Strategies in London, that adCenter customers in the UK are welcome to sign up and take the adExcellence exam.

adExcellence is a new source of helpful educational materials now available to marketers. Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program offers free training to help you become a Microsoft adCenter expert.

Check out the adExcellence classroom and start learning more about how to get the most from your adCenter experience. Training materials are available that cover everything from getting started to an in-depth overview of our editorial policies.

It is this training that also prepares you for the Microsoft adExcellence accreditation exam, enabling you to increase your industry recognition and help improve the overall ROI for you and your customers.

We have had a lot of really useful feedback on the program from many customers both in the UK & US, and will be incorporating any suggestions into new training modules as adCenter continues to develop and acquire new features.

Thanks!

Mel - adCenter Community Team

Scheduled Maintenance - Friday September 7th 2007

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:23:19 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Microsoft adCenter will be unavailable during an upgrade starting this Friday September 7th, beginning at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time (2:00 A.M. GMT Saturday 8th September), and continuing for up to 8 hours.

During this time, your current keywords and ads will continue to run normally; however, you will not be able to access adCenter.

Please make any needed changes to your account beforehand if possible.

After the scheduled maintenance, reporting will be delayed for up to 72 hours. On the adCenter Reporting tab please check the timestamp at the bottom of the page to see when the data was last updated.

Thanks!

Mel

adCenter Community Team

adCenter upgrade postponed

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:55:06 GMT

Hi everyone,

The Microsoft adCenter June 23 upgrade has been rescheduled for a later date. Your campaigns and keywords are running, sign in to the adCenter UI to manage your account. A future upgrade will allow you to manage negative keywords at the campaign level in addition to several features to improve performance. We’ll keep you informed as to when this future upgrade will occur. We apologize for any confusion that this may have caused and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Reporting is currently delayed, view the timestamp on the adCenter Reporting tab to see when your data was last updated.

Thanks!

Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Scheduled Maintenance, Saturday, June 23, 2007

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:28:39 GMT

Hi everyone,
Microsoft adCenter will be unavailable during an upgrade this Saturday, June 23, beginning at 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time, and continuing for up to 14 hours. During this time, your current keywords and ads will continue to run; however, you will not be able to access adCenter. Please make any needed changes to your account beforehand if possible.

After the scheduled maintenance reporting may be delayed for up to 24 hours. On the adCenter Reporting tab please check the timestamp at the bottom of the page to see when data was last updated.

Heads-up on a new feature you'll see after the maintenance on Saturday: you'll be able to add negative keywords (a specific word or phrase that helps to prevent your ad from being displayed to customers who are unlikely to click your ad) at the campaign level so they apply to all the ad groups in the campaign. Watch for more info about this on the blog next week.

Thanks!
Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Microsoft to Acquire aQuantive, Inc.

Fri, 18 May 2007 17:40:03 GMT

Today we announced that Microsoft will acquire aQuantive, Inc., the parent company of one of the industry's most successful families of digital marketing service and technology companies, encompassing three primary brands.

Atlas provides a set of advanced tools for both advertisers and publishers. The Atlas Media Console is an industry-leading toolset providing agencies and advertisers with capabilities to maximize ROI. The Atlas Publisher platform enables publishers to maximize monetization opportunities for their content.
DRIVEpm provides services to publishers and advertisers that match advertiser campaigns with publisher inventory enabling all parties to maximize ROI.
Avenue A | Razorfish is one of the largest interactive ad agencies in the world, providing advertisers with industry-leading digital marketing consultation, media planning and buying, and creative services that help advertisers use the online channel to build meaningful, profitable relationships with their customers.

The aQuantive acquisition enables Microsoft to strengthen relationships with advertisers, agencies and publishers by enhancing the Company's world-class advertising platforms and services beyond its current capabilities to serve MSN. The acquisition also provides Microsoft increased depth in building and supporting next generation advertising solutions and environments such as cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV.

To learn more, please read the press release.

Thanks!
Carolyn,
Microsoft adCenter Community Team

Updates to the Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions for US Advertisers

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:01:48 GMT

Our legal teams have done a little spring cleaning and have made recent updates to the Terms and Conditions for adCenter advertisers in the US. These updates will be in effect starting today, April 30, 2007. Some of the key adjustments to the Terms and Conditions include:

Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your advertisements.
Microsoft may display your advertisements on its network of advertising channels operated by the Microsoft network of participating Web sites and other distribution outlets.
The payment and reporting terms in your adCenter agreement have been clarified to describe your rights.

What do these changes mean?
The Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions is the contract that applies to your participation in the Microsoft adCenter online advertising program. Primarily the Terms and Conditions were updated to offer expanded advertising opportunity to you. Specifically, the contract was adjusted to include matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your advertisements. The language was also expanded to include the distribution of your advertisements on the Microsoft network, including MSN and other participating Web sites and future distribution outlets.

You can view the full Terms and Conditions by logging into adCenter and clicking the Advertiser Terms and Conditions link on the footer of the page. If you have any questions, please contact the adCenter Support team.

Thanks,
Jeanie DuMont
Microsoft adCenter Community Team

Microsoft adCenter Upgrade: New features to improve campaign management

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:04:33 GMT

We’ve got exciting news this week! As we mentioned in a few of our previous posts, our engineering team has been diligently working to make adCenter easier to use. For those of you that have tried the adCenter beta site, you’re probably already familiar with some of the exciting new features and we hope that you’ve found the improvements helpful. Or, for those of you who are currently participating in our US Content Ads pilot, you’re already using the adCenter beta site.

We’re now taking the next step forward. On Thursday, April 26, 2007, the current adCenter site will be upgraded with these new features, including:

Improved navigation. Easily go to any campaign or ad group in your account via our navigation enhancements.
Bulk edit keyword settings. Quickly make updates to negative keywords, dynamic text and destination URLs for all of your keywords.
Enhanced campaign imports. Import new campaigns or make updates to existing campaigns with our new, robust, import feature.
Microsoft Excel download option. You can now download all of the adCenter data sets in an Excel format.
Full text search. From any page, find campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads that contain all or part of a search query string by using our new full text search feature.
And more! Watch our webinar to learn more about how to make the most of these new features.

Share your comments on the new adCenter features and let us know what you think at our Microsoft adCenter forum.

Jeanie DuMont
Microsoft adCenter Community Team

Open to everyone: The Microsoft adCenter beta

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:45:07 GMT

As you might have heard, we recently updated our Microsoft adCenter beta site with new features designed to make campaign management, navigation, and reporting easier and more efficient. We’re excited to announce that all of our advertisers in all regions can now access the adCenter beta site and try out the new features. This spring, the enhanced features of the beta site will be incorporated into the main adCenter site, which makes this a great time to become familiar with the improved features. We encourage you to try it today at http://beta.adcenter.microsoft.com.

Here’s a sample of what the new features include:

Easily go to any campaign or ad group in your account via our improved navigation
Delete poor-performing keywords right on the Keyword Performance page.
Download all adCenter data into Excel.
From any page, find campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads that contain all or part of a search query string by using our new full text search feature.

You can also learn more by watching our brief webinar, “Microsoft adCenter Beta: New features for improved productivity”. For best results, click "Open" rather than "Save".

We would love to get your feedback on what you think about these new improvements. Drop us a comment and tell us what you think. Or, you can fill out our adCenter feedback form.

Thanks!
Jeanie, Microsoft adCenter Community Team

6/7/07: We've edited this post to reflect the newly updated webinar, as we've now launched the beta features in the existing adCenter site.

Microsoft adCenter - Now open for business in Canada, eh!

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:24:52 GMT

Despite the cold Canadian winter, our Canadian adCenter team has a lot to celebrate. Today marks the official launch of adCenter in Canada. Now, 100% of all traffic is being served by adCenter.

We are very excited to build on the successes seen in the U.S., U.K., France, and Singapore, and to announce that there is now another choice for advertisers in the Canadian marketplace. Sympatico / MSN has access to the largest Canadian online audience with over 19.4 million unique visitors per month.

To anyone who previously advertised to Canadians on Live Search through Yahoo! Search Marketing, we encourage you to continue reaching this high quality traffic by utilizing adCenter Canada. To take advantage of adCenter Canada:

Visit www.adcentercanada.ca to sign up. All you need is a credit card and your campaign information to get started. There’s a Can $5 sign-up fee to register.
If you are already using adCenter, you can access this new market by creating new ad groups using either the Canada English or Canada French region and language.
Contact your adCenter representative.

We know that as Canada heats up (literally), we’ll see new “faces” in the adCenter community. Let us know how we are doing – starting now.

Take all the great ROI you are already seeing with adCenter and come to Canada.
The adCenter Canada team

[edit 3/02/07] fixed typo [/edit]

Advertisers may see high CPC and spend amounts

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:49:42 GMT

Some of our adCenter advertisers are seeing high cost-per-click (CPC) and spend amounts in their accounts. I will update this post with more information as soon as I have it, but I wanted to let you know that this issue is now resolved and those of you who were overcharged, we're working on a plan to credit your accounts for over-charges as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience,

Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

UPDATE 2:26 P.M. PST

Those of you who were affected by this issue - your account will automatically be credited the amount you were overcharged.

If your account has gone into a paused state due to this issue - the adCenter team is currently investigating this as a top priority and I'll post here when I have more details.

I apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

--Carolyn

Scheduled Maintenance, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2007

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:24:52 GMT

Microsoft adCenter will be unavailable during scheduled maintenance this Saturday, February 10, beginning at 9 A.M. Pacific Time, and continuing for 24 hours. During this time, your current keywords and ads will continue to run; however, you will not be able to access adCenter. Please make any needed changes to your account beforehand if possible.

Thank you for your patience,
Carolyn
Microsoft adCenter Community Team

adCenter Maintenance Scheduled for Sat. Jan. 27 - CANCELLED

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:55:44 GMT

Hi everyone,

The adCenter maintenance that was scheduled for this Saturday, January 27th has been cancelled. The adCenter service will be available as usual.

Thanks!

Carolyn

Microsoft adCenter Community Team

Scheduled Maintenance, Saturday, January 27, 2007

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:10:51 GMT

Microsoft adCenter will be unavailable during scheduled maintenance this Saturday, January 27, beginning at 9 A.M. Pacific Time, and continuing for up to 15 hours. During this time, your current keywords and ads will continue to run; however, you will not be able to access adCenter. Please make any needed changes to your account beforehand if possible.

Thank you for your patience,
Carolyn
Microsoft adCenter Community Team

adCenter Unavailable for Maintenance - maintenance complete

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:18:22 GMT

Hi everyone,

Just got this in from our support team.

We are currently conducting maintenance on the adCenter user interface. The user interface will be unavailable for the next couple hours. Rest assured, your campaigns and keywords will run as usual. However, you will be unable to make changes using the user interface. We are sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while maintenance is being performed.

Thanks,

Carolyn

adCenter Community Team

[edit] 1:00 PM PST Removed text referring to API; API is also unavailable at this time. I'm sorry about this error. [/edit]

[edit] 5:00 PST Maintenance is complete and the user interface is now available. Thank you for your patience!

adCenter unavailable

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:35:36 GMT

***UPDATE 4:06 pm Pacific time: This is now resolved - thank you for your patience. -Carolyn ***

Hi everyone,
The adCenter service is unavailable due to unscheduled maintenance. I apologize for this inconvenience and I'll keep you updated here.

Thanks,
Carolyn

Billing Section -- Maintenance Tomorrow

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:07:18 GMT

The adCenter product team will be making some updates to adCenter tomorrow, Saturday, Nov. 11.

The billing tab will be unavailable from approximately 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time).

The rest of the service will be available and your campaigns will continue to run.

Thanks,
Carolyn
adCenter Community Team

Welcome to our new Space

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:59:57 GMT

We've moved the adCenter blog here to Windows Live Spaces. Since we're part of the Windows Live family—adCenter paid search results appear on Live Search—we thought it would be good idea to blog here using one of the integrated suite of Live products. Don't forget to update your favorites and RSS subscriptions!

If you're looking for our previous blog content, you can view it on our former blog, however, we won't be adding any new content to that blog.

In addition to our new blog, we are excited to announce the launch of two new Microsoft Communities: the adCenter and adCenter Labs forums. These discussion forums are your place to ask questions and discuss adCenter and adCenter Labs with the adCenter team, as well as other customers. We'll be monitoring these forums to make sure your questions get answered quickly.

While you're here at Spaces, check out the Spaces team blog to see what they're up to.

Thanks!
Carolyn
Microsoft adCenter Community Team

PS. The Community Team will be attending Webmaster World PubCon in Las Vegas, from Tuesday, November 14 to Friday, November 17 and we'd love you meet you. More info coming soon!