Search Marketing Sage

I have recently started to wander into the world of Microsoft adCenter and all the wonderfully confusing ways that it is completely different from Google.  So as I start down the yellow brick road, I thought I’d share some of my findings!

Negative Keywords

Google

In Google AdWords, you can have exact, phrase, and broad match negative keywords.  This allows you to exclude traffic both very specifically as well as on a broader spectrum.

Bing

East Coasters — how many of you were prepared for the earthquake last week? Probably caught you off guard, didn’t it? Luckily, there wasn’t much damage, but still probably left you with an uneasy feeling, a little like the situation was out of your control. It’s much easier to prepare and maintain control of a situation when you know it’s coming, and know what to expect.  Knowing what’s coming for Microsoft adCenter, you can start preparing your accounts for these changes.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is gaining search traffic by the day, and since it merged with Yahoo, it’s collecting more search resources as well.  As the search engine grows both in user base and capability, running an efficient, precisely targeted ad campaign will soon be a necessity for many that wish to advertise in the search space.  The Microsoft Adcenter interface is sufficient for running many pay-per-click advertising campaigns, but there are a few features that would make creating and managing a large, efficient, and highly effective campaign a little easier.

Adcenter currently does not have a way to edit or view keywords at the campaign level, or at the account level.  When making bulk edits to destination URL’s or trying to analyze which keywords have the highest conversion rates, or are spending the most without producing results, it’s very helpful to see all the keywords in a campaign at once.  This makes it quick and easy to see where bids need to be adjusted or if words need to be paused completely.

One day late last week, my day started like any other day with checking E-mail and my Tweets.  Barry Schwartz aka @Rustybrick tweeted a Search Engine Round Table article about a situation that I was already aware of, but the idea of it finally hit home.  Yahoo is essentially going away this year for search engine marketers and the count down to its irrelevance has begun.

It’s far from a done deal, and there are more than a few potential obstacles in the deal actually getting approved, but sometime this year Yahoo as we know it will likely be gone (I’m betting much later in the year).

So the question has to be asked is all this work I’m doing to make Yahoo PPC accounts perform all for nothing?

This week, Microsoft announced updates to its Microsoft adCenter interface, and along with those updates came changes to the desktop application as well. I have just recently started using the Microsoft adCenter Desktop (beta) application that is similar to Google AdWords Editor. I was very skeptical at first, until I actually used it.

The application mimics AdWords Editor in the fact that it was created to help you, the advertiser, become more efficient when using the original online product.

The way the online interface is designed, it can be very time consuming to create and manage your campaigns. When making account edits, it always took me twice as long to make the changes in adCenter than Google AdWords or Yahoo Marketing Solutions. Since I have started using this new application created for adCenter, I have found that it is far less painful to tackle account edits.

Taking into consideration that I edit a large account, reallocating budgets everyday took a very long time. The interface takes you through a rather extensive series of steps to simply edit the campaign budgets: Click on the campaign (Wait to load…). Click “Change Settings” (More loading time…). Edit your budget, click “Save” (More loading time… again…). Once loading is complete, you land back on the “Campaign Selected” page. Now that you have finally updated the budget, you can now navigate back to the Account page where the list of campaigns exists. Now you can start all over with your next campaign. Imagine doing that over 40 times! Updating your budgets should not take you this long. No one can afford to spend that much time on what should be a quick and easy process.

Using the Microsoft adCenter Desktop (beta) application makes this a much easier task. You can quickly navigate down your list of campaigns, edit your budget right there at the bottom of the same page, while simultaneously keeping track of which campaigns you have edited. The elimination of all of the load time that occurs when navigating back and forth, to and from the edit campaign settings pages alone makes this a much simpler task. Now all you have left to do is upload changes, just as you do in AdWords Editor.

As I mentioned before, updates to the application rolled out with the adCenter Spring 2009 Upgrade:

• Manage larger amounts of data.
• Upload and download separate accounts instead of all at once.
• Update bids at ad group level along with keyword level.
  
• Addition of ad ID column in the bulk data sheet; this allows a quick update to existing ads in bulk by exporting editing, then uploading back into the desktop application.
• Preview imported data before submitting.
• Set city and state targeting for multiple campaigns and ad groups.

If you are not already utilizing this application for Microsoft adCenter, I suggest you try it out today. Needless to say, I’m a fan.