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Pay per Click’s New Challenger – MSN AdCenter

Look out Google Adwords (GAW) and Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM). A new opportunity for lowering costs, better targeting and better conversions is quickly approaching.

YSM (formerly Overture) has lost Microsoft, a key partner in their search network. MSN use to display YSM ads within MSN search results, but this is no longer the case. To add salt to the wound, their onetime partner is now a competitor. Microsoft’s newly released PPC offering is poised to stir up the Pay Per Click (PPC) arena by displaying MSN ads in MSN Search results dubbed, MSN AdCenter.

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Currently, MSN is in the first phase of its official launch. However, in the spirit of previous Microsoft releases, it is still a little "buggy." Expect this to be refined as time progresses. In the initial testing phase, MSN AdCenter was pilot tested in France and Singapore during the third quarter of 2005. The results from the tests were favorable. Following the success of this initial test, MSN AdCetner went into beta testing in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2005.

After using MSN AdCenter upon its official release in May 2006, my personal opinion is the PPC results are great (lower costs, high click through rates and good conversions). I also am beginning to prefer the usability of the system itself in setting up ads and keywords. GAW was my personal favorite in regards to usability, but MSN is beginning to take the cake as it continually improves from its initial release.

The other benefit that MSN’s entry into the PPC arena may offer to the PPC industry as a whole would be lower costs brought about by increased competition. This means that larger advertisers can potentially lower budgets by divesting from their GAW and YSM budgets and reallocating that money into MSN AdCenter. However, with MSN’s current traffic share being low compared to Google or Yahoo, this may not occur until MSN becomes more widely used amongst searchers.

MSN Adcenter has improved targeting compared to GAW and YSM. GAW and YSM both provide geographical targeting, but they don't have demographic targeting features. With MSN AdCenter targeting, advertisers are able to specify geographic settings and demographic settings by gender and age group. Additionally, for optimizing conversions, advertisers are able to choose the days and times to run their ads. This may include times the business is open to take calls or times known for best conversions based on existing sales data. Coincidentally, GAW recently introduced day-parting in a recent update on June 16, 2006. Advertisers can also use the MSN AdLab tools (http://adlab.msn.com) to source keywords for use in search campaigns as well as behavioral analysis tools based on demographics.

These MSN AdCenter features are useful, but what really makes MSN unique is in its ability to easily setup one ad for many keywords through dynamic text based on four parameters: URL {param1} Ad Text{param2}, AdText {param3} and dynamic keyword insertion {keyword:}.

The URL Parameter, is the parameter you can enter at the end of your url: yoururl.com/{param1}. You would then set your {param1} per keyword as {/?item-landing-page.html} This allows advertisers to have a different landing page for every keyword. This is a useful feature for e-commerce advertisers with a diverse catalog, travel sites that advertise different location destinations, and ticket sites advertising different show venues.

The ad text parameters two and three {param2}, {param3} allows advertisers to create dynamic ads unique to each keyword, but different to the actual keyword used, as in {keyword:} which uses the actual keyword the searcher has entered into their search query. This past weekend I setup a campaign for a hotel reservation site where the keywords totaled nearly 3,000. Setting up a similar campaign would have taken me countless hours with GAW (various adgroups and ads) and YSM (categories and setting up one ad for every keyword). However, with the ability to enter this information into a csv file to import into this account, it took less than a couple hours to setup the entire campaign.

GAW offers dynamic text, but only dynamic keyword insertion {keyword:}. GAW’s dynamic keyword insertion allows advertisers to create an ad to display multiple keywords. And with YSM, you can click the copy title and description for all ads. However, creating just one ad and changing it with parameters better targets an ad for improved click through rates. These parameters keep each ad unique to each keyword.

As good as the features are in MSN AdCenter, there are also some problems. The problems I have noticed so far have been its inability to render correctly in the FireFox browser causing it to crash or "freeze." The reporting area’s usability leaves much to be desired, but has been updated and is a lot more functional than its initial rendition. Also, you are not able to add capital letters within the displayed URL. This is a feature of both GAW and YSM.

Additionally and probably due to the program’s infancy, MSN AdCenter does not have a certification process allowing PPC management experts to certify they are a qualified expert in managing MSN AdCenter accounts. This provides credibility for search engine marketing agencies and for MSN AdCenter. To compete with GAW and YSM, both of which offer certification to advertising professionals, MSN will have to adopt a similar program. Thus search marketers can help in the growth of MSN AdCenter by offering it to their advertising client base. Microsoft is big in certification with its software offerings, so certification with MSN AdCenter is probably inevitable as opposed to my wishful thought.

You may be new to PPC or an experienced professional, if you have not used MSN AdCenter yet or have reservations about it; you will want to give it a try before overall costs’ per click begin to increase. With the dynamic text abilities and demographic targeting, I personally have never achieved better click through rates with any other PPC search engine than I have with MSN AdCenter. Although the total number of clicks pale in comparison to GAW or even YSM for that matter, when it comes down to targeting quality traffic, MSN AdCenter is poised to be the best and most revered amongst PPC professionals.

About the Author:

Warren Pattison is the Director of Search for Elixir Systems www.elixirsystems.com , a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management.

You can comment on this article at the Elixir Systems Search Blog.

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