Microsoft Adcenter update:

Campaign Management update:
The adCenter Spring Upgrade is complete, and this is the first in a couple of posts about the new features you’ll see. This one covers campaign management updates in adCenter online. Be sure to check out the other Spring Upgrade feature reviews: Account Management Updates, adCenter Desktop (Beta) Updates, and Content Ads Updates (U.S. Only).
Better Targeting Options
First off, a change to your targeting options. Now you can apply customer targeting and incremental bids for your entire campaign with new campaign-level targeting, and then further refine targeting at the ad group level. (Note: Your ad group-level targeting settings will override those at the campaign level.) This is a feature we’ve seen requested from our community customers please let us know what you think in our discussion forum.
Greater Bidding Flexibility
We’re introducing an improvement to adCenter bid management as well. Now you can set default keyword bids for your ad groups, and use nondefault bids to override the default when you prefer. Setting default bids for all keywords reduces the complexity of bidding individually and also makes it faster when adding new keywords. You can use the nondefault bid to override the default on high performing keywords or, in the case of seasonal keywords, return to the default once the season ends. If you have both search ads and content ads (U.S. only), you can set separate default bids for each.
Note: The nondefault bid overrides the default bid in your ad group. Nondefault bids are clearly displayed in bold in your keyword table for easy reference.
Improved Keyword Research Tools
With the Spring Upgrade you’ll also find improved keyword tools on the Research tab. These can help you build a more effective keyword list and, as a result, help boost your campaign performance. Now you can:
Use new filters to refine your list of suggested keywords. View performance and demographic data by keyword. Add selected keywords to your negative keyword list. Bid on keywords and review estimated performance data. Review keywords and bids and add them to an ad group.
Here are a couple of updates to help you manage campaign and ad group settings more easily.
A new Targeting settings page enables you to easily set all of your targeting and incremental bid options within one place.
A new Exclusion settings page lets you specify exclusions at the campaign and ad group levels.
Customizable campaign data tables: Your campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword tables are updated with a new look and feel, including the option to hide columns you don’t use, similar to Microsoft Office Excel.
To view our Feature Guide and Video Tutorials and learn how to use these new features, visit our Whats New in adCenter page in the Microsoft Advertising Learning Center (U.S.) or the U.K. What’s New Page.
Account Management Updates
With the adCenter Spring Upgrade, there are several account management updates to help you maintain your accounts more efficiently; we’ll cover these in this post. To read our other Spring Upgrade feature reviews, check out Campaign Management Updates, adCenter Desktop (Beta) Updates, and Content Ads Updates (U.S. Only).
Use Windows Live ID to Sign In to adCenter
Now you can sign in to adCenter by using your Windows Live ID. If you are already signed in to another online program with your Windows Live ID Hotmail, for example you can easily sign in to adCenter without reentering your credentials. And if you’re an adCenter Admin, you can also invite new adCenter account users to access your account by using their Windows Live ID.
New Home Page and Alerts
In adCenter you’ll find a new Home tab that takes you quickly to your home page. Here our new Alerts, Whats new, and FAQ areas help keep you informed about whats happening with your account and with adCenter in general.
Alerts: Displays messages specific to your user role and adCenter account. Whats new: Keeps you informed about new features and announcements. FAQ: Links you to popular Help topics and information.

Account Settings
We’ve improved the My Settings page, so now you can more easily create and manage your personal information, marketing preferences, and alert settings all in one place.
And in the Alert settings section, you can select the severity of the alerts you want to receive within four alert types: account, billing, campaigns, and general.

How to make money on PPC Advertising

Pay per click advertising no doubt is the great way of driving traffic to your site. It goes without saying that more traffic yields more sales. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to make money. To be sure that your PPC advertising brings you more sales you want. Here are some important things need to keep in mind for your PPC advertising.

• First, know your product completely. Then only you will be able to give true service to your customer. The more you are aware of your product, the more you will in a position to explain the benefits of it to your customer in a proper manner.
• Develop effective keywords list that attract the customer towards your product and prepare the ad with a creative copy which will help to convert the click in to sales. Just showing of ad is not enough. Your ad should be such that they tempt to click on it and make a purchase.

• In PPC advertising don’t spend more than what you make. Try to stay within your budget and decide a deadline for it.

• Master the bidding process thoroughly. Have a clear understanding on how bidding process works. This bidding process will not only helps you in controlling your budget but also fix a right amount for each keyword.

• Once you decide to spend money to get customer to buy your product make sure that you have effective landing site and the copy on your site is persuasive enough to make them buy your product.

• Analyze your campaign regularly. Keep a track on which keyword is effective enough to make the customer buy. And those keywords which are not so effective make a variation in it and try to produce it in a better way. And still if those keywords are not working properly then stop using it. As it will be a loss for you.

By following these basic things you will be able to make more money than what you spend.

MSN adCenter Wants Your Feedback

MSN adCenter has been making some upgrades and changes to its back end compartment for pay per click advertisers. If you are an MSN adCenter user or you’ve been tinkering with it a little to see if it can benefit you then you are encouraged to them some feedback. Customer feedback is a very important part of any business and, in fact, the entire marketplace. The more feedback you give to each company in any niche, particularly where there is a runaway leader as in the space of pay per click advertising then the more you’ll benefit each company and every consumer within that market – including yourself.

You can give feedback to MSN adCenter with their feedback form.

And if you really want to follow up with MSN adCenter to see how they are doing while staying on top of future changes then you might be interested in the MSN adCenter Facebook Page

Source -ppc journal

12 Steps to Effective Online Budget Allocation

I got these points from a great article written by Mel Carson in adcenter community. According to mel, the 12 steps are –

1. Retention
2. Intention
3. Attention
4. Detention
5. Coordination
6. Collaborate
7. Differentiate
8. Speculate
9. Analyse
10. Plagiarise
11. Optimise
12. Economise

For the detailed version of this points, visit http://adcentercommunity.com/blogs/analytics/archive/2008/10/20/12-Steps-To-Effective-Online-Budget-Allocation.aspx

adCenter Fall Upgrade: New Features

MSN adCenter upgraded the adCenter interface and added new features to help make managing your adCenter campaigns easier. The first thing you’ll notice when you sign in to adCenter is a new look and feel. You’ll also notice some new features.

Improvements include:

Campaign Management: ability to pause and resume ads and keywords, geo-targeting enhancements, and improved performance reporting on the Ads page
Editorial Improvements: faster reviews, dynamic feedback about why ads and keywords were disapproved, and inline notification when dynamic text causes your ads to exceed character limits

User Management: if previously you were only able to have one user, now you can create multiple account users

Content Ads (U.S. only): get keyword bid suggestions and performance estimates for your content ads

For those of you who like to keep on top of what’s new with adCenter, adCenter has also added a New Features link to the top of each adCenter page. You’ll also find a What’s New section on your home page that lists the three most important adCenter updates. These new sections link to further information about our new features and how to understand and use them.

Source – Adcenter Blog

Differences in Analytics of Google AdWords and MSN adCenter

The major reason why I prefer Google AdWords PPC over MSN adCenter is the distinction in their analytics package. If you are using MSN adCenter, it is mandatory to insert code onto your landing page and a link will be appeared on your pages. The link is pointing to the MSN adCenter privacy policy and the link allows your site visitors to read the privacy policy at a quick look. I favor Google AdWords because I don’t want to include a link on my page at all. I am not against any privacy policy and I think that is necessary. But I feel it is better to put my own privacy policy than to give a link to another web site’s privacy policy. It looks more proficient and it won’t confuse the visitor. Even if the MSN adCenter link on my landing page opens up a new window for the MSN adCenter privacy policy, I still don’t like the link to be appeared in my page. But if you are happy with the service provide to you by MSN adCenter, then go ahead. Continue use it. I just express my opinion.

Import Bulk Ads Into Microsoft adCenter

Step-by-step process of MSN bulk uploading

1. Log in to your Microsoft adCenter account
2. Click on the Campaigns tab
3. Pick an advertising campaign that you want to upload your ads to.
4. Next, pick an ad group into which you want to upload your ads.
5. Select the Ads tab.
6. Now click Import ads.
7. You can import ads from another PPC provider or you can upload ads from your desktop. Manually input the data or choose between Excel or CSV.
8. Click Import file.
9. Select the file in the Choose file option box and click Open.

Now your pay per click ads will import into MSN adCenter without difficulties.

How to increase Click throughs on your Ads

Main problem in PPC ad writing is there’s no enough space for you to express your ideas. Humm? For example, in adwords there are two description lines with 35-35 characters and a title with 25 characters. Shrinking our ad to this much character spaces is sometimes really difficult. Your sale process starting at your landing page. But bringing people to your landing page is done by your adcopy only. The number of visitors coming to your landing page depends on how effectively you could convey the ideas and features of your service. So utilize all the characters effectively.

Here are three ways you can increase your click-throughs – Use influential Words in Your Titles – An influential word is an emotionally thrilling word that gets the attention of visitors and makes them click because you’ve strike a trigger. Some powerful power words are: amazing, incredible, successful, vital etc.

Promise a Benefit – Tell your visitors that you are going to give some benefits like free shipping, free consultation, discount etc. But it should be genuine.

Be Specific – Be specific when telling about figures like company turnover and revenue. If you are concentrating more on these steps, your adcopies will give you more click throughs.

Concentrating on a Single PPC Provider?

It seems that 95% of PPC Advertisers concentrating on Google adwords only. What you think? Is that enough for your online marketing? How will you reach people who exclusively using other search engines like yahoo and msn? So it is better to create PPC account in other search engines also. It is not a must. And do a market research before doing so.

For some product, I have seen yahoo is working better than Google. Especially tax saving, payday and consolidation programs. Normally we are seeing minimum clicks and conversions in MSN when compared to adwords and yahoo. But remember one thing. What you are spending in MSN for that clicks and conversions are also very less when compared to the other two search engines. so try to create account in at least two search engines. But don’t go too risky.

New Keyword Research Tool from MSN adCenter

It seems all the search engines are competiting to deliver new services to the customers. The latest one in the queue is MSN adCenter’s New Keyword Research Tool. Whether they hope they can possess some search engine shares that Google is enjoying now? I donno. Anyway these are the unique features they are offering-

1) Audience Insights – this tool will help you get a little more detail about certain demographics that you are planning to target with your PPC campaigns. Sounds good no? But you can use it only if you are running ppc in MSN and opt for this service.

2) this tool is a beta add-in for Excel. Unlike Google’s keyword research tool (that is purely an online tool), you can install this MSN tool. If you are using Excel to analyze your keyword lists, then it may surely make sense for you. Some people download the CSV list even on Google AdWords. Having the MSN adCenter keyword research tool will make it easier for you to analyze the difference between Google adWords keywords and MSN adCenter keywords. We can’t say that the tool is a worthy one now. You use and find out.