We all know that MSN adcenter has a horrible interface. But the traffic from the network is conversion gold. This paradox sets up an excellent opportunity for the hard working search marketer. Most people are understandably frustrated with the interface, therefore don’t put a lot of effort into their campaingns. So I have always seen this a benefit. You have this great traffic source that is difficult to use, so if you are willing to put the time into it you can dominate your niche. If it were slick and easy like Adwords, everyone would be using it.

That being said, there are ways to make it a little easier to work the current interface. First of all the import tool works fairly well. You can directly import a campaign that you exported from Adwords or YSM. Also for repetitive edits like changing bid prices on adgroups, you can automate the task using a program like imacros with firefox. This can really speed up campaign changes.

The window of opportunity is closing though. Their new offline editor currently being tested is going to rewrite the MSN playbook, making it extremely easy to upload ads, make changes, monitor reports and do everything it takes to make a successful campaign. (I don’t have a copy yet but I have seen advanced screenshots – it looks awesome). When this becomes available to the general pubic, I predict a huge rush of competition to MSN which should drive up bid prices and lower ad posistions. Thus ending the competitive advantage to be exploited now.

There are a ton of keyword tools out there both free and paid.  But, some of the best and most innovative tools these days are coming from MSN. Yes, I said MSN not Google. Their Adcenter Labs site is really putting out some cool gadgets lately that I am using a lot.

Here’s some examples:

Demographics predictor You type in a keyword, and it shows you the predicted demographics of who might be searching for this term. That is really important information for targeting you campaigns and ads, as well as good data to use for Google content network targeting;)

Keyword Mutation Detection This is a great misspelling and typo tool.

Keyword Group Detection This tool finds groups of keywords related to your original keyword. Great data.

Ad Text Writer Type in a URL and this tool will write text ads based on the content of the site. Doesn’t always work great, but fun to play around with.

Entity Association Graph This one is really cool. Type in a keyword and the tool show other entries that co-occur within the same user session. You can adjust your hop levels and edge strength with sliders. This kind of info is gold for search marketers.

These are just a few of the many tools MSN has. If you really want to dive into your niche and learn everything about it, these free tools are a great place to start.  Remember, to dominate your niche, you have to know everything there is to know about it.  Research is the key.

The news came out yesterday that Microsoft adcenter will be officially discontinuing the $50 credits for new account promotion on Feb 29th. I just wanted to let everyone know in case you want to take advantage of the offer before it goes away for good. Now would be a good time to get that new account for your grandmother

MSN $50 New Account Credit

As I predicted, Microsoft put in an offer to buy Yahoo today for 44.6 billion. While it’s not a done deal yet, Yahoo is considering it and if they are smart they will take it. What does this mean for the search world? That remains to be seen, but if I were Google I would be VERY nervous. If any company is powerful enough to take down the Google juggernaut it is Microsoft. Combine Microsoft with Yahoo and you have a market share grabbing machine. I think this merger would be an GREAT thing for search marketers. If Yahoosoft could grab 50% of search in 2 years think of the possibilities for search marketers. Think MSN conversion rates with 3 times the current volume. Should be interesting to see how this plays out…

I have been playing around with the new adcenter plugin for Excel and I have to say I am impressed. I work with Excel all day long for everything anyways, so a tool that works within that interface is a great idea. There is a lot of advanced keyword analysis possible with the add-in. I am really just scratching the surface with it, but I definitely recommend giving it a try. You’ll need Excel 2007 to run it. The best part - it’s free.

Download the tool

One of the big weaknesses of Yahoo and MSN’s PPC interfaces is their lack of offline editors to build a campaign. Fortunately you can build all your campaigns with the Google Adwords editor, then export those results. From all the tools I have tried, the Adwords editor is the fastest way to build up a campaign, so I start every campaign there, regardless of where it will end up. It’s pretty simple to do, but there are a few things to watch out for.

Google:

Once you build your campaign the first step is to export it as a CSV file. Once you have the CSV file, you are ready to import it.

Yahoo:

To get a Google Adwords CSV file into Yahoo you first have to convert it. I believe you need a Gold account to use this tool, but it’s not hard to get one. Simply point it to your file and click “convert”

Once you have the converted file, there may be some formatting issues. First check to make sure the program joined the 2 line Google ad text into the 1 line Yahoo format correctly. Then search/replace the content matching column from on to off. Once everything looks good you can upload the converted file.

Once imported, set your GEO targeting and other options and you are ready to go.

MSN:

For MSN, no conversion is required. Just point to your Google CSV file and choose import.

MSN magically converts your file and uploads the new campaign. But now you have a big problem. MSN imports the new campaign with all the adgroups inactive. You then have to manually go and active each adgroup. If you have a large number of adgroups (like you should) this is a huge task. I have talked with the MSN people and they say they are working on a solution, but for now it’s a manual process. This makes the MSN import process the hardest by far. But it is still much faster to build the campaign with the Adwords editor and import, than it would be to build the campaign in MSN itself.

It seems MSN adcenter may actually listen to their customers.  They may even be reading this blog.  They are finally addressing some major concerns, I posted about back in April.  You can now use a default alternate text for your dynamically inserted phrases that are too long.  This is a key feature if you use placeholders and dynamic inserted text in your ads to increase your relevancy.

They are also consolidating the status emails they send out, to 1 a day.  If you have even woke up to an inbox full of “Your keywords have been removed” emails, you will welcome this feature with open arms.

Also among the new updates are improved campaign approval speed, and better reporting.  We shall see about the this one.  All in all though, MSN seems to be making progress in the right direction.

Well, most of us affiliate marketers have been whining about MSN’s adcenter interface and how virtually unworkable it is. They are far behind all the other big 3 PPC engines, and most 2nd tier engines as well in my opinion. Now they are planning a big upgrade tonight which will take down their system for 8 hours, and delay reports for another 72 hours. Let’s hope this is the major renovation we have all been asking for! According to their recent email, here are the changes they are attempting:

Upgrade highlights:

• Save time with fast and thorough editorial reviews for new ad groups.

• Create campaigns with ease by quickly importing campaigns directly from other paid search programs or by copying existing ad groups within adCenter to a new campaign.

• Instantly navigate to specific accounts, campaigns, or ad groups with the new adCenter home page dashboard, a one-stop-shop for all of your daily campaign management tasks.

• Update keyword bids in bulk and view keyword performance on the same page.

• Visualize your campaigns’ targeting settings with Microsoft Virtual EarthTM map integration for geographical targeting.

To me by far the biggest improvement that I am excited about is the ability to import other campaigns from Google and Yahoo. This will be a huge timesaver and I’m sure increase the amounts spent at MSN. It should allow me to use the technique that I currently use with my other campaigns, which is to build everything with Google’s offiline adwords editor, export, then import into Yahoo for example. Hopefully MSN’s new “convert 3rd party campaign” works as well as Yahoo. We shall see.