adCenter Blog Has Moved To - www.adcentercommunity.com

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

Heads-up: the adCenter Blog is moving

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:58:40 GMT

Just wanted to give everyone a quick heads-up that this blog will be moving to a new location next week, so please keep your eye out -- we'll post the new URL here so you can come check it out and let us know what you think.

We'll keep you posted...

Thanks,

Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Microsoft adLab Tools Review Part 2 – Keywords & Content

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:01:13 GMT

As discussed in an introduction post, Microsoft adLab showcases some of the innovative tools and technologies our researchers are helping to build, providing advertisers and publishers with the very best ways to connect with consumers.

Today, I’ll single out just two from the Keywords & Content category on the adLab website.

The new Entity Analysis tool includes data for both the English and French language. Simply put the algorithm breaks down complex user queries into separate entities making it easier for the delivery engine to serve the most relevant ad.

These examples give you an idea how a query can be broken out into separate words or phrases that make an entity. Applied to adCenter, this should mean an ad for a house builder that specialises in installing “gates” would no longer phrase match to “Bill Gates”, meaning a more relevant set of results on the search page, and a potential increase in click-through rate for the advertiser.

The Detecting Commercial Intention tool is a favourite of mine, as it helps determine whether a user’s query is meant to result in a sale or transaction of some sort, or whether they are simply looking for information or gathering data to inform an action at a later stage in the buying cycle.

Results for the American football team “seattle seahawks” show a low commercial query probability as it’s most likely the user is looking for information on the team, maybe the latest scores or line up, but they’re certainly not looking to purchase anything.....yet.

Conversely the commercial intent of “seattle seahawks shirt” is high as it’s product-orientated and the user is obviously looking for shirts related to the team.

This tool is very useful for determining the kind of ad copy you could write for these two very different queries.

For “seattle seahawks” you might write copy that is somewhat informational – “Find the latest team news and scores and check out our online merchandise store.” With this copy are catering for the information-gathering nature of the query, but also letting the user know there is a store on your site should they be looking to purchase souvenirs too.

The “seattle seahawks shirt” ad copy should be more of a commercial nature – “Buy Seattle Seahawks shirts in all sizes securely online. Free shipping!” The users is obviously looking to buy a shirt, so make sure your ad tells them what and how they can purchase one from you.

For more on how to write great ad copy, check out our Creative Services Team’s archive of posts here: Ad Copy Best Practice

Next time we’ll look at some of adLab’s forecasting tools.

Cheers

Mel – adCenter Community team

adCenter Analytics - How To Run Basic Traffic History Reports

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:27:46 GMT

Last week we talked about Getting Started With adCenter Analytics and implementing analytics tags on your website.

Today, we'll show you how to run some simple reports to track how many visitors you have had to your site, and how many pages they viewed.

When you log into adCenter, click on the Analytics Tab, and then Profiles and you will see the list of sites you have created profiles for.

A green status light means the tool has been collecting data and you are now ready to view some reports.

Click on View under Reports for the Profile you want to see data for.

Depending on how long data has been collecting for, you will see a screen that looks a bit like this:

On the left hand side find the Reports Menu. Click on Traffic & History and two options will appear.

“Visitors” is the number of unique users that have been accessing your site and viewing content over any given amount of time.

“Page Views” are the total amount of pages that were viewed by those visitors.

The number of page views is very often larger than the visitor total, as a user may look at more than one page of your site while browsing it.

A quick way to see how many visitors have been to your site in February would be to hover your mouse over the February segment of data. A tiny pop-up will appear with that month's visitor statistics.

In this case the site received 1501 unique visitors in February.

In order to see how many pages those visitors perused, click on the Page Views option in the Traffic & History menu.

You can get a quick view of data by hovering your mouse over the week or an actual day too.

To get a detailed breakdown of your traffic for a given month, week or day, simply click on the data segment and it will highlight in orange.

Below, you will see a graph showing the detailed traffic for that given time selection including Visits, Page Views & Bounce Rate.

Bounce Rate is defined as the percentage of your visitors that viewed just a single page of your site when they arrived. They may have perused the first page on which they landed but did not explore the site further. A high Bounce Rate might be OK for a blog, as readers may only arrive to read a single post. But if your site is selling products or services, you'd want users to spend some time navigating your site, so a high Bounce Rate may be a signal that you need to investigate further.

We’ll talk about analysing reasons for Bounce Rates, and how to take action in more detail in a later blog post.

The final way you can run a basic Visitor or Page View report is by clicking on Select A Custom Date Range.

This functionality enables you to see data for any given number of days, weeks or months. You may want to see your site's traffic for just a three week or six day period. This lets you click on your desired start and end time values and see how much traffic you have received during that date range.

Do check back next week when we'll be delving into some other reports in a little more detail.

Cheers

Mel - adCenter Community Team

Search Engine Strategies New York

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:17:43 GMT

The Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference is next week in New York, NY. There will be Microsoft folks speaking at a couple of the sessions, so stop by and see us...

Wednesday, March 19th: 5:30-6:45pm - Searcher Behavior Research Update

Pavan Lee, Research Manager, Microsoft

Thursday, March 20th: 12:45-1:45pm - Meet the Crawlers

Nathan Buggia, Lead Program Manager, Live Search Webmaster Center

Also check out our sponsored session, Tues. March 18 from 3:15 - 4:30:

Microsoft Search | Tips and tricks for delivering great results and campaigns with Live Search
Learn how to improve your search marketing investments and execution across both your paid and organic efforts through Microsoft's Adcenter and Webmaster tools for Live Search. Come join us as we walk through the latest product updates including the new Adcenter Excel Add-in for Keyword research and the Webmaster Center. Combined these tools can improve your company's campaigns across both paid and organic results.

Speakers:

Jorie Waterman, Lead Program Manager, adCenter Keyword Research Platform
Nathan Buggia, Lead Program Manager, Live Search Webmaster Center

Hope to see you there!

Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Focus On Exact Match

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:55:17 GMT

This week, Gabe Ingalls gives us some insight into using Exact Match keyword functionality in your PPC campaigns.

Cheers

Mel - adCenter Community Team

While an uncovered light bulb can illuminate an entire room, a laser can highlight and draw attention to a single item in that room. Exact match can do the same for the keywords within your adCenter account. Building on the account optimisation techniques that Simone focused on in her negative keywords post, this week I will help you understand the benefits of using exact match in your account and outline some of the best practices for doing so.

Benefits of Exact Match

To make your adCenter account highly effective it is necessary to target your most relevant keyword and ad combinations to the most relevant user queries. By using exact match you can do exactly that. Consequently, using exact match will provide your account with:

1) a more precise correlation between the user query and delivered results
2) an increased propensity for the most relevant ad copy to be displayed
3) reporting that allows you to see more clearly where your clicks and conversions are coming from

All three of the above should help to increase the CTR and long-term ROI of your account.

The Right Answer to the Right Question

If you think of search as a question, then the results you obtain can be seen as the answer to your question or query. It is therefore important to provide users with the most relevant results for their questions to increase the likelihood that they will click on your ad. While broad match can provide you with more traffic for individual keywords, it does not provide the user with a 1-to-1 ratio between the search query and the displayed results as illustrated below. In this diagram, the original keyword is at the apex of the triangle. With each step down the triangle or away from original keyword, the relevancy between the original keyword and the derivative keyword is reduced. This occurs even though each of the derivatives contain the original term. The terms at the bottom of the diagram receive more impressions, however they would also receive a lower CTR when displayed against a specific keyword.

Like a flashlight shining on a wall, the closer the wall is to the source the more precise and bright the beam is; when the light is moved further from the wall it illuminates more of the target area, however the beam is not as precise or bright (relevancy) as a laser would be when pointed at the same wall. With exact match you can provide the user with brighter, pinpointed results specifically relevant to their query and boost your CTR.

Seeing is Believing

Exact match also increases the probability that relevant ad copy associated with the keywords will be displayed when used in combination with targeted campaign strategies (see our adCenter account structure post) or Dynamic Text Insertion. Writing specific ad copy that is associated with either a granular account structure or individual keywords (Dynamic Text Insertion) ensures greater relevancy between the searched query and one of your ads; closer relevancy maximises the chances that your most relevant ad will appear. It is this relevancy connection between the user query and the displayed ads that helps to drive a successful ad campaign. For example, for the query below which is the most targeted ad copy?

The middle ad is the most relevant to the search query because it utilises the most meaningful elements of the keyword and should provide the highest CTR/ROI for that particular query.

Moreover, exact match also allows you to see the precise words that users are clicking on. Because adCenter keyword performance reports can be split by match type, an exact match strategy will allow you to see which keywords are getting traffic and which are getting clicks. This knowledge can then be applied to your overall understanding of your account as well as provide greater understanding of what the best possible keyword and bid strategy looks like.

Bid Strategy Best Practices

An analysis of adCenter data for the top 30 car insurance keywords across all advertisers and all positions shows that exact match provides keywords with a higher CTR than broad match.

In addition to this, an analysis of the top thousand UK customers shows on average that exact match (9.82% CTR) has twice the CTR of broad match (4.52% CTR). Consequently it is important for you to incorporate exact match in your bidding strategy.

Focusing on Your Target

While exact match should play part of your bid strategy, many opportunities could be lost if this was the only practice that you exercised in your account. It is therefore recommended that exact match be used in combination with broad match. This will allow your account to benefit from both the precise relevancy that exact match brings as well as the scope that broad produces as well as help to maintain a long-term ROI for the account.

To be more precise, when using both broad and exact match it is necessary to bid higher on exact match than broad. This should help to prevent exact matched keywords from being ‘eclipsed’ by broad match. For example, if a keyword has the same bid for both exact and broad and broad has a stronger keyword history because it receives more impressions, the exact match bid may be ‘eclipsed’ by the broad match bid and not be displayed. The same would be true if the exact bid was smaller than the broad bid. By bidding higher on exact you can help to ensure that the highest level of relevancy between the query and bidded keyword will be displayed in your ad copy.

Incorporating a higher exact match bid into your overall bid strategy should help you to increase your CTR. Over time this will help your ads to be displayed at a higher position for a lower CPC! However as mentioned in previous blogs, negative keywords, account structure and ad copy are also essential parts to an inclusive adCenter search campaign.

Next week, Kate returns to answer the top adCenter frequently asked questions of the moment!

adCenter Analytics - Getting Started!

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:45:59 GMT

adCenter Analytics is a free web analytics tool that helps you easily understand web site user engagement and online marketing campaign performance.

You can track audience behaviour from click to conversion, segment data by age and gender or simply run a report to see how many visitors have accessed your site, where they came from and what content they looked at.

You can be up and running with adCenter Analytics is just Four Simple Steps!

Step 1 – Register

adCenter Analytics is in Beta at present and access is by invitation only. To be considered for participation please complete the invitation request at:

http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter-analytics-registration

Step 2 – Sign Up

Once your invitation request has been processed, you will receive an e-mail with an invite code similar to the code below:

“7a9c466e-0f67-4a4a-b9af-029af-02b0ea4e2611”

Follow the prompts in the e-mail, and sign into adCenter. If you do not have an adCenter account, you will be able to create one in a few simple steps. Once you have signed in you will be directed to the Analytics welcome page and prompted to enter the invite code. Enter the code and click “Next.”

Step 3 – Create a Profile

Click on the Analytics tab at the top of the page and you will see two icons: Profiles & Users

Click on the Profiles icon to add the URL of the site you want to track with adCenter analytics. To add a Profile, click on the Add New Profile button.

In the profile name box, type a display name to identify the web site or blog you are tracking, the domain or web site address, and select a time zone. If appropriate, check the “Automatically adjust for daylight savings changes” box and click “Save”. If you are manually inserting the tracking script onto your web pages then check that radio button and click "Save."

You can automatically insert the script using our wizard. Check back for a post on that on Thursday...

Step 4 – Adding the Tracking Code to your web site

You will be prompted to add a small piece of Javascript code to every page of your website that you want to track. You’ll need to copy and paste the code snippet just before the </body> tag in your site’s HTML.

Once your site goes live with the new analytics code added, Microsoft adCenter Analytics will begin collecting data within a few hours!

Next week, we'll run your through how to run some basic reports.

Cheers

Mel - adCenter Community Team

Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta Upgraded

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:19:00 GMT

We’re pleased to announce a recent upgrade to adCenter Analytics (formerly known as “Project Gatineau”).

Since we launched the Beta at the end of October, we’ve been listening to our customer’s feedback and working hard to incorporate any requests and suggestions.

One of the pieces of feedback we received was about the $5 adCenter sign up fee. Moving forward, we’ve now waived that fee for Analytics customers.

This new version includes many additional reports and data views to help you analyze your website’s traffic and give you a better handle on the success of ALL your marketing campaigns.

Access new reports such as in-depth visitor tracking, treemap views (colour-coded snapshot graphics that allow you to quickly understand complex data), and campaign reporting.

Use summary report rollups to gain insights about ROI, visitor loyalty, conversions by referral, and campaign timeline view, which displays a color-coded timeline of multiple campaign performances.
Track marketing results beyond search ads. Analytics campaign performance reporting covers ROI, conversion rates, and revenue of banner, e-mail, and direct response marketing campaigns.

View and compare pay-per-click (PPC) campaign performance for multiple ad placement programs—not just adCenter. View performance for adCenter and third-party online advertising programs within a single reporting interface.

This new functionality is further enhanced by your ability to track and report on different segments by demographics.

This means you will be able to see the behaviour of your visitors broken down by Age & Gender.

Next week we’ll drill down into some of the new reports in a little more detail so keep checking back to the adCenter Blog for further news and updates.

In the meantime please take a look at your account and let us know your feedback as we value your opinion.

You can share your thoughts and comments about these new features on the adCenter Analytics Forum, where you can interact with other beta participants and if you have further questions, please contact our Analytics Support Team.

If you’ve not yet registered to participate in the Beta please fill out the adCenter Analytics Registration Form and check out the adCenter Analytics page on our advertising site.

Cheers

Mel – adCenter Community Team

Negative Keywords - It's All Positive

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:15:44 GMT

Today, Simone tells us how to banish unwanted impressions forever!

Cheers

Mel - adCenter Community Team

Adding negative keywords to your search campaign is one of the easiest optimisations you can do and it’s free!

Negative keywords help to prevent your ad from showing up in search queries unrelated to your website when you bid on broad or phrase match. Negative keywords can increase your click through rate (CTR), improve your average position and decrease the cost per click (CPC).

So negative keywords can bring about a very positive change to your campaign!

Chocolate Labradors & Football Boots.

How do you know negative keywords are needed? High impressions and relatively low clicks may indicate your keyword & ad is attracting unintended attention.
The keyword ‘chocolate’ for example is a very relevant one for a chocolate manufacturer but the ad would serve about 100 times a month to people looking for ‘chocolate Labradors.’

Your brand name may also be in need of negative keywords. The chemist Boots would attract traffic from thousands of users looking for footwear. Apple would not only attract traffic from users searching for IPods but also from Nigellas looking for apple crumble recipes if relevant negative keywords are missing from the campaign.

How to find negative keywords?

Pull a keyword performance report and find the high impression/ low click culprits and type these into the Keyword Research tool.

When you find the negative keywords, remember a few things:

Only add the part of the keyword you don’t want your ad to serve on (so for ‘chocolate’ the negative keyword would be ‘labrador’ and not ‘chocolate labrador’).
Separate the negative keywords with commas.
Individual negative keywords can have up to 100 characters. The maximum amount of characters for all negative keywords is 1022 including commas.

Campaign or Keyword level?

Negative keywords can be added on the campaign and keyword level. On keyword level negative keywords can be much more effective as it is almost always a few individual keywords that have multiple meanings. Application at the keyword level allows you to tailor negatives to individual keywords, minimising the chances of making mistakes and blocking relevant traffic.

Negative keywords work on the campaign level in a more generic way. If you only sell new cars for example, you could add ‘second hand’ on the campaign level as a negative keyword to filter out inappropriate prospects.

Additional negative keywords on the keyword level override any added on campaign level.

How to add negative keywords to the campaign?

There are a few ways in which you can add negative keywords:

In bulk for one or more campaigns.
To keywords in an existing campaign.
To keywords in a new campaign.

Next week Gabe will be giving us some tips about exact match & bid price strategy.

Boost your adCenter traffic with Microsoft Content Ads

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:40:43 GMT

Last month we announced that Microsoft will become the exclusive provider of contextual and paid search ads for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN). Today, we're here to share some tips for how to get more quality clicks from our contextual network, which includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com, as well as MSN Money, CBNC.com, EDGAR Online, FOX Sports, MSN Entertainment, and other partner sites .

Microsoft Content Ads ^Beta, available in the U.S., places content-targeted advertisements on relevant web pages across the Microsoft network and partner sites (mentioned above) – and offers the perfect opportunity to potentially increase your adCenter impressions and clicks as we expand our network of participating high-quality sites.

It's easy to extend your search campaigns to Content Ads, and you can set different bid prices for content clicks by using the Advanced Bidding function at both the ad group and keyword level. You can also see how your contextual ads are performing with advanced reporting features in the adCenter Report Center.

This screenshot illustrates how to choose Search, Content, or both distribution channels when creating a new campaign:

You can get more out of your Content Ads campaigns by:

Increasing your bids:
- Start with competitive bids to position your ad to appear. Remember that, unlike Search ads, there are a limited number of ads that appear on an editorial page – typically, 3-5 slots.
Monitoring your ROI with conversion tracking:
- Track your ROI with adCenter conversion tracking to help you regulate competitive bidding and adjust your bids as needed.
Writing compelling ad copy:
- Since users are not actively searching for products or services during a contextual ad experience, ad copy should be customized to attract a more passive audience.

Find out more about Microsoft Content Ads ^Beta on advertising.microsoft.com – and check out the Content Ads webinar.

UK Live Search Users Placing Trust In Pay-Per-Click

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:51:16 GMT

Today - Nick Drew, our Search Research Manager, shares some insights into searcher attitudes in the UK.

Cheers

Mel - adCenter Community Team

Last year, we shared with you some UK research that we’d conducted about the quality of click-throughs from search engines. One of the most interesting findings from the Quality of the Live Click research was that clicks from Live Search result in more time spent on the destination site and were more likely to convert to a purchase than clicks from any of the other major search engines.

Specifically, a consumer coming from Live Search is 70% more likely than the average searcher to convert (buy a product or sign up to a newsletter) during a visit to a particular website.

In order to explore some of the reasons behind this, we partnered with Nielsen NetRatings – a respected internet analytics and research firm – to look into how consumers feel about search engines, whether they trust them and so on. The results are particularly relevant in light of all the news stories recently about privacy and trust online.

The study showed that users trust Live Search more than any of the other major search engines. In fact, 95% of users say that they trust Live Search. When it comes to the quality of results provided, more than 2/3 believe that Live Search would only list reliable and trustworthy websites – significantly more than said the same for Live Search’s main competitors.

The second major finding has to do with how Live Search users perceive paid search links. In fact, they’re quite positive about them; so much so that searchers on Live Search are 3 times more likely to look at the sponsored listings first than those using Google. In addition, as the chart below shows, searchers on Live Search are significantly more likely than those on other search engines to regard a website more favourably if it appears in the sponsored listings.

% of users of each engine agreeing that ‘I tend to view a website more favourably if it appears in the sponsored listings’

Obviously trust is a key part of any purchase, especially online, so the fact that searchers trust Live Search more than its competitors perhaps goes some way to explaining why they are more likely to make a purchase (or otherwise convert) on a website that they found through Live Search. But it also tells us that if you are spending money on Microsoft adCenter, then it’s a wise investment, as our users are receptive to paid search and do trust us to provide them with quality links to quality websites.

Thanks

Nick

Your questions answered: contacting adCenter Support

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:48:17 GMT

One question we see in community discussion forums is "How do I contact adCenter Support?" The adCenter Support team can help you with questions ranging from bidding and budgeting to targeting and editorial. Our Support representatives can also help improve your campaigns – to save you time and help attract customers to your business – by helping you to:

Test your ad copy
Identify your most successful keywords
Expand your search terms
Develop a keyword bidding strategy

If you're logged in to adCenter, there is a "Contact Support" link in the footer of the user interface. You can also access the Contact Support link from adCenter Help, which is accessible from a link in the top-right corner of the UI.

You can call or email adCenter Support by following these links, according to your market.

If you have a question about adCenter you can also check the adCenter discussion forum to see if someone else has had a similar question answered previously, or to ask your own question.

Thanks!
Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Brand Vs Generic Keywords

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:06:08 GMT

Today, we have Craig Brown from our Creative Services Team who'll try and iron out that age-old dilemma of which kind of keywords to choose...

Cheers

Mel - adCenter Community Team

The title of this posting is a bit of a misnomer...‘Brand vs Generic’ suggests a battle between two opposing forces but in reality an effective search campaign on adCenter needs the right mix of both, as they fulfil very specific but equally important functions and are co-dependent. Without the generics, a user may never find your brand. Without brand keywords, a user may be tempted away by a competitor at the crucial moment.

Is this all just theory or is there proof that searchers behave this way? Well, Microsoft commissioned a study with Comscore to study this in late 2007. The study focused on search traffic to over 20 of the most popular travel sites from June to August 2007. All keyword searches were categorised into brand or non-brand generic and tracked as to whether they led to a referral (defined as a hit on a travel site) or a secure session (defined as a user navigating to a secure purchase section of the site). The topline results make for some interesting reading:

Arrow A - Lower number of generic searches leading to higher numbers of referrals.
Arrow B - Fewer branded referrals leading to more secure sessions.

Out of all the tracked searches during this period, almost 60% were brand searches. Despite a lower number of generic searches, generic keywords accounted for 51% of all referrals. However, when it comes to secure sessions, 71% came from brand searches. This backs up the idea that generic keywords are essential to driving users to your site but may not convert to a sale immediately. The driver of conversions is brand keywords, but without the refinement and filtering provided by generics, many brands may not be discovered by users.

Generic Strategy

For some search campaign planners, conventional wisdom is that if a keyword doesn’t convert directly to a sale it is not worth having, and it does not make financial sense to be competitive on high volume generic keywords as the bid depth is too great. While this may actually be the case for some search engines and specific advertisers (an example being a small hotel in Torquay bidding on the keyword ‘hotels’), it should be pointed out that there is still lots of good quality traffic available on Live Search through generic keywords.

The Comscore study found that 15% of generic searches led to a referral on Live Search compared to 11% for Google and 8% for Yahoo!, showing that there are a higher proportion of referrals available from generic searches on Live Search compared to some other search engines. A relevant list of generics alongside great ad copy can get you noticed...

Brand Strategy

In terms of brand keywords, another often quoted idea is “Why should I bid on my brand keywords when I am appearing number 1 or 2 in the organic search results?” As the driver of conversions, it is vital that you are represented at the brand level so that you don’t lose potential customers at the final hurdle to a competitor. In addition, one of the standard measures of a brand across all advertising mediums is the level of trust that brand has. Appearing position 1 in both natural and PPC listings reinforces your brand in terms of visibility to the user, while also enhancing trust in the brand.

A survey on search behaviour by Neilsen’s Net Ratings in August/September 2007 backs this up. Over one third of respondents reported that they view a website more favourably if it appears in the sponsored links section. Google users were half as likely to view sponsored listings so favourably. In term of overall trust, Live Search scored highest among search engines overall so it is important that you take advantage (in a nice way of course) of this trusting audience by bidding on your own brand keywords.

Brand and generic keywords are vital ingredients in any PPC campaigns. Both have different functions and to a great extent different metrics. With this is mind, keep them in separate ad groups or even separate campaigns so that account reporting and analysis can be as meaningful as possible.

My final recommendation is that if you are appearing below position 3 for your own brand there are likely big opportunities to reassess your strategy - maybe bids are too low or you are not using an exact match bidding strategy. Improvements on brand performance will likely lead to improvements in sales.

Thanks for listening!

Craig – UK Search Media Analyst (Financial Services)

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

Meet with the adCenter Product Team at SMX

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:56:31 GMT

We're going to SMX and we'd like to meet with you! Would you like to get a sneak peek at new products while you're in Santa Clara for SMX? Want to give us feedback on adCenter – directly to our engineering team? Then we'd like to get together with you.

We're specifically interested in meeting with advertisers who are small agencies (to talk about multiple account management) and advertisers with high-volumes of keywords who'd like to test new campaign management tools.

If you're interested please drop us a line at acpc (at) microsoft (dot) com and we'll schedule a time to meet with you.

See you there!
Natala Menezes, Product Manager, Microsoft adCenter

Register for upcoming adCenter Beta and Pilot Programs

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:38:31 GMT

Are you interested in helping to test new adCenter products or tools before they're widely available? If so, we've launched a new interest form where you can sign up to participate in future Beta or Pilot Programs with adCenter. These programs help us gather your feedback on new products early in the development cycle.

Becoming a Beta or Pilot Customer offers you:

Early access to future adCenter tools. In the past customers have received access to tools and services such as Content Ads and the adCenter Add-In for Excel 2007
A chance to shape the future of adCenter. Be part of how adCenter develops as it goes through its pilot phase and know your feedback could change it for the better!

For more information on how to participate, please see the interest form. We will then contact you about Beta testing opportunities that match your interests and beta requirements.

Thanks!
Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Search Marketing Expo West coming right up

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:25:19 GMT

The SMX West conference is next week (Feb. 26-28) in Santa Clara, CA. Here's a list of different sessions where Microsoft will be represented. We hope to see you there!

Tuesday, Feb. 26

10:30am-11:45am - Raju Malhotra: Search 3.0: The Blended Search Revolution
10:30am-11:45am - Mary Berk: Decrypting Quality Scores
1:15pm-2:45pm - Henry Hall: Search 3.0: Video, Images & Blended Results
3:15pm-4:30pm - Kevin Hagwell: Search 3.0: Local Search & Blended Results
4:45pm-6:00pm - Paul Dillon: Search 3.0: Online Retail & Blended Results

Wednesday, Feb. 27

1:00pm-1:30pm - Kelly Thomas: Theater Presentation - Get More Quality Clicks with Microsoft Content Ads
1:30pm-2:45pm - Sean Lyndersay: Search 4.0: Will The Social Graph Change Search?
3:15pm-4:30pm - Nathan Buggia: SEO 2.0 For Web 2.0 Sites
3:15pm-4:30pm - Natala Menezes: Search Ads & Behavioral Targeting
4:45pm-6:00pm - Nathan Buggia: Search Engineers Q&A
4:45pm-6:00pm - Christopher Plambeck: Paid Search Roundtable

Thursday, Feb. 28

9:00am-10:00am - Brad Goldberg: Generation Next: Search In The Coming Decade
10:30am-11:00am - Sebastian Gard: Theater Presentation - The Cynic's Guide to Live Search
2:45pm-3:45pm - Nathan Buggia: Linking Q & A

Thanks!
Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Revisions to Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:41:30 GMT

Today, adCenter customers received notice of an upcoming update to the adCenter Terms and Conditions. I sat down with Kelly Thomas, adCenter Product Marketing Manager, and Ken Weyel, Group Manager, Global Operations, to ask them some questions about the revisions. Here's the text from our interview.

Carolyn: What are the changes to the adCenter Terms and Conditions?

Kelly: We're adding a section that empowers our adCenter representatives to help you manage your account more efficiently – with your permission.

Ken: We've heard from a lot of customers, "I wish you could just do this for me," so now we're enabling this option for you. This terms and conditions expansion will enable us to provide you with more valuable service and support when it comes to your campaign performance.

Kelly: And also help save you time when you're managing your campaigns.

Ken: Right – with your approval, your adCenter representatives will now be able to assist you with your account to help you balance your workload, so you can focus on your business.

Carolyn: When is this change happening?

Kelly: For anyone who creates a new account on February 21 or thereafter, the updated terms and conditions will be in effect. For existing advertisers, the updated terms and conditions will go into effect 30 days after today's notice, and will be visible in the adCenter user interface on February 21.

Carolyn: Why are we making these changes?

Ken: We're continually focused on the customer experience and we feel these changes will allow us to meet our customers' service requests – we want to better serve you and increase your satisfaction, and we want you to be happier with the service we're offering.

Carolyn: How will this change affect customers' accounts?

Kelly: The change to the terms and conditions do not translate to any activity on your account unless you solicit and receive advice from adCenter.

Ken: Correct – if you'd like to participate in our optimization programs, then you can, without having to fill out an additional form as is currently required.

Kelly: The value in this offering as we see it is you could potentially receive better clicks and better conversions with assistance from an adCenter representative.

Carolyn: What are the benefits of the changes?

Ken: Ideally, with help from an adCenter Representative, you could see higher-performing campaigns. You can also learn optimization tricks & tricks, bidding strategies, and gain editorial guidance.

Kelly: This assistance will also potentially save you time by helping with your campaign management.

Carolyn: Where can customers view the T&C's?

Kelly: When you're signed into the adCenter user interface, click the "Advertiser Terms and Conditions" link in the bottom left-hand corner.

Carolyn: If customers don't want an adCenter Representative accessing or modifying their campaigns, how can they opt-out of this service?

Kelly: You don't have to opt-out; the service requires you to give permission for any changes to happen.

Carolyn: What about customers outside the U.S.? When will their Microsoft adCenter Agreement be updated?

Kelly: We're working with our legal departments in the Canada, Singapore, France, and U.K. markets to update their terms and conditions as soon as possible. We're hoping to have this completed by end of May.

Thanks to Ken and Kelly for giving this interview. We hope this post helps give you more context around the upcoming changes.

--Carolyn, adCenter Community Team

Office Live Small Business Launches Featuring adManager

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:13:02 GMT

The Office Live Team has announced today that the next version of their suite of online business tools is now available.

The web-based service for small businesses will be available in the US, UK, Japan, France and Germany. A new e-mail marketing system and improved free Web design tools are among the many new features and enhancements. In addition, Office Live Small Business will support Firefox 2.0 and offers additional free online business applications to help small businesses manage customer data and more.

We’re particularly excited as they include a much improved version of adManager which enables businesses who have built their websites using the Office Live platform, to quickly and easily access great converting pay-per-click traffic on Live Search and MSN.

Here are just some of the features:

Get Online

Advanced design capabilities including the ability to customise the entire page, including header, footer, navigation, page layouts, and more.
Support for Firefox 2.0 means Office Live Small Business tools and features are now compatible with Macs.
Simple Sign up process allows small-business owners to get started quicker. Users no longer have to choose a domain name at signup or enter their credit card, and they get a free custom domain name and business e-mail for the first two years.
Office Live Small Business E-mail now includes 100 company-branded accounts free, each with 5 GB of storage to help businesses communicate professionally.
Domain flexibility allows businesses to obtain their domain name through any provider and redirect it to Office Live Small Business, as well as increased flexibility to add and designate primary domains.
Synchronisation with Microsoft Office Outlook provides customers access to vital business information such as their Office Live Small Business e-mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks both online and offline.

Attract Customers

E-Mail Marketing Beta enables users to stay connected to current customers and introduce themselves to new ones by sending regular e-mail newsletters, promotions, and updates. (Free during beta.)
Contact Manager is the foundation of customer marketing. The improved user interface that enables customers to find and add contacts more efficiently. (Free)
adManager is now easier to use and allows users to advertise across multiple search engines, including MSN and Live Search (Pay-per-click pricing.)

Manage Your Business

Business Applications is integrated with the Office Live Small Business Workspace and Document Manager features in this release, making them even easier to use. A new sidebar that makes it easier to see user permissions, add new users to a workspace, and share data. (Free)
Reports have been updated to allow for integrated reporting for adManager, E-mail Marketing Beta, and Web site traffic into one central reporting experience, giving users a unified view of their marketing campaigns. (Free)
Homepage Gadgets have been updated to included additional gadgets such as a Reports gadget that shows users at a glance the number of unique visitors and page views for the current week and the previous two weeks. (Free)

Reminder: Microsoft adCenter Team at SES London

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:30:27 GMT

Just a quick follow up to my post last month about Microsoft's participation at Search Engine Strategies London 2008!

The conference will be held at the Business Design Centre in Islington from 19th to 21st February.

We have quite a few of us speaking at sessions throughout the conference:

Orion Panel: All Star Analytics Team - Ian Thomas

Search Term Research & Targeting - Tor Crockatt

Meet the Crawlers - Paul Stoddart

Creating Compelling Ads - Tor Crockatt

Search Advertising Forum - Mel Carson

Check out the Conference at a Glance and Register Here!

Hope to see you there!

Mel - adCenter Community Team

Custom List: Forums

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:29:00 GMT

Forums

Custom List: Blogs

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:28:09 GMT

Blogs

Custom List: adCenter Links

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:26:27 GMT

adCenter Links

Custom List: Microsoft Links

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:08:02 GMT

Microsoft Links

Custom List: adCenter Links_old

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:13:25 GMT

adCenter Links_old