Another Pay-per-click Option: Microsoft adCenter

If you are looking for another way to expand your search marketing program, Microsoft’s adCenter may be good option. AdCenter is Microsoft’s Live Search pay-per-click (PPC) management application. As the fourth most trafficked search engine in the world, Live Search has the potential to be a high performing search marketing medium. Features of Microsoft’s adCenter include campaign importation templates, immediate editorial feedback on keywords and ads, specific ad targeting options and updated reporting capabilities. The implementation of these features brings adCenter closer to the caliber of Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing consoles. There are however, a few things to keep in mind when using Microsoft adCenter to manage your Live Search PPC campaigns.

The adCenter console operates very much the same way Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing do, making it an easy transition to getting started in adCenter. If you already have PPC campaigns in Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, you can easily import the campaigns and keywords into adCenter through the use of Microsoft Excel templates. The templates can be downloaded from adCenter, and used to help format all of your existing campaign information and keyword lists from other PPC vendors.

It has taken a while for Microsoft to catch up with Google and Yahoo!, but Microsoft finally introduced an immediate editorial feedback function in adCenter. The function makes it easier to create ads that meet the technical requirements for Microsoft’s editorial guidelines. AdCenter instantly validates ads or keywords by checking each ad to ensure it meets the following four conditions:

1. All of the required fields are complete (e.g. ad title, ad text and destination URL).
2. None of the fields exceed character limits.
3. The destination URL is formatted correctly.
4. The display URL is formatted correctly.

Passing the immediate editorial feedback validation, however, still does not guarantee that your ad will be displayed. Your ad must still meet the content requirements in Microsoft’s editorial guidelines. Content editorial guidlines cover ad characteristics such as the type of product or service being advertised and the use of trademarks in ads. Microsoft says that newly created ads that are approved usually become active within a few minutes, and that your ad was probably approved if you don’t receive a rejection email within two hours of your ad being submitted.

Microsoft hypes adCenter’s dynamic text ad and incremental bidding options, which are intended to help you further customize your ads and target them at specific times in order to increase click-through-rates (CTRs). Dynamic text ads use keyword variables to display a customized ad that is more likely to appeal to potential customers. Incremental bidding allows you to bid an additional amount beyond your keywords bid in order to increase the position of your ads and target customers by location, day of week, time of day, customer age, or customer gender. While Microsoft’s claim is true that dynamic text ads and incremental bidding can increase CTRs, it isn’t guarranteed. You should carefully examine your ad campaigns by evaluating keywords, keyword match type settings, ad position performance and budget before implementing either of these targeting options.

AdCenter’s reporting capabilities are typical of what Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing offer. Reports are categorized by report group. Each report group contains reports that are related to a specific aspect of an account. Campaign performance reports can be viewed for an entire account, campaign, ad group, ad, or a specific keyword. Custom report options include a drag and drop feature to reorder custom report columns and the ability to include totals and averages at the bottom of reports.

Recently, Microsoft unveiled their adExcellence program, which provides advertisers with the opportunity to hone their adCenter skills and become recognized as an adCenter industry expert. WebShare is one of the first companies in the world to become an adExcellence Member. Members of the adExcellence program must complete classroom training and demonstrate their knowledge by passing an exam.

In addition to being an adExcellence Member, WebShare is also an Adwords Qualified Company and Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador. We are recognized as a premier pay-per-click management company in the search marketing industry, and offer a wide range of PPC services that can help you increase the performance of your PPC campaigns.

In early December Google began testing a new tool called Knol, and of course it is getting a lot of buzz. The theory behind Knol is to apply Google’s “knowledge” of relevance analysis into creating a web space where you can go to find useful information on topics “from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.” They named it Knol because they feel this term should be known as one unit of knowledge. Udi Manber, VP of Engineering at Google explains that “A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.” The structure of the tool will include an endless number of Knols.

With the advent of Knol, the search engine giant may intentionally or unintentionally be trying to pull traffic from Wikipedia and social networks like Facebook. The competition to Wikipedia is easily recognized when Google describes their aggregate system as a place to find knowledge. Just like Wikipedia, Google is asking people to write a trustworthy article on a particle subject for their Knols. However Google is claiming that the main idea of Knol’s design is to highlight the authors. The thought here is that if you know or recognize the author, you can then make a judgment on the level of authority the person has on that particular subject. At first it might be surprising that Google would start a competition with Wikipedia since it seems like you can’t do a search these days without getting a Wikipedia result on the first page of Google’s search results. Looks like Google has just recognized another great place to advertise and who wouldn’t want their own knowledge aggregate system on their home turf?

With respect to social networking sites, Knol may also be stealing some traffic. There is no better authority to write on yourself or your company than YOU, and this concept is similar to other social networking sites already out there. The difference here is that Knol would allow others to write on a subject with competing pages and claims of being authoritative. People like people and they don’t mind some drama - by allowing readers to know the author, they can get content with some background behind it. At this point it is too early to tell how much of a search marketing opportunity Knol could pose for individuals or organizations but it certainly looks promising.

Google has proven they are the online relevance king for search results (those results can be found in the latest search activity numbers). Thus we expect they can apply all that “knowledge” to create a great information aggregate system that is useful and relevant. Udi Manber stated “We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.” We are also excited.

Google Analytics has just put in place a new feature that will be formally announced very soon – comparison graphing for your reports.

For those of you that have grown accustomed to the tireless examination of your key Analytics reports day after day, this new feature is a welcome addition to Google Analytics from a usability standpoint. Whereas we have been seeing key metrics compared to site averages for quite some time now (displayed in red or green, in parentheses next to key numbers), we now have the ability to graph two metrics or two date ranges.

Ever wanted to quickly see things like:

Has all of our work paid off and did we get more traffic this holiday season than last?
Just head to your favorite traffic report and drop down your date selection box and select the two date ranges you’d like to compare. Black Friday 2006 to 2007 or any period you’d care to see.

Are more visitors looking at our December Discounts page after we highlighted it on our major landing pages last week?
Find the page in question in your content reports, set your date ranges to compare and enjoy the view!

Did that string of newspaper ads in San Francisco and L.A. get us more traffic from the state of California? More e-commerce transactions? Better conversion rates?
Just navigate to the Map Overlay report for California, set your comparison date ranges and have a look, city by city. You can use the tabs at the top to compare traffic, conversion, and e-commerce numbers over your date range and any geographic location.

Are visitors from my banner ads staying on my site longer after I made my landing pages better a month ago? Are they converting better as a result?
Have a look at the time on site column of the campaign report where you track your banner ad visitors. Conversion and e-commerce numbers are just a click away!

Does my G1 conversion rate trend in the same way as my G2 goal over time? What does it look like for Chicago visitors that came from a geo-targeted Adwords campaign?
Head over to your All Traffic Sources report, drop down the graph options, select “Compare Two Metrics” and pick the goal conversion rates you’d like to compare. Get even more detailed by finding the cross segment of a specific Adwords (or any other) campaign while in the Map Overlay report. Now drop down the graph options and pick your two goal conversion rates!

The answers to all of these questions can be quickly graphed right in the Google Analytics console now, and there are myriad ways to use this new feature and quickly see a snapshot of date range comparisons.

Webshare is a Google Analytics Authorized consultancy and can help you set up, configure, and analyze this invaluable data. We offer customized analytics training as well as Google Analytics consulting for any project.