Microsoft plans to launch their own contextual program this fall. It will be a US only invite pilot, however, one can request to be invited. What’s going to be interesting to see is how many features they plan on porting into contextual. For instance, they plan on supporting demographic targeting.
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Microsoft adCenter to Launch Contextual Program This Fall

There are three main types of vanity related keywords, and each has it’s own unique characteristics. Understanding keyword relationships is critical to both PPC and SEO.

However, the fun related keywords are when you can see what a search engine things about you (or your business, website, etc). When examining what the various search engines think about people, very obvious patterns exist - is there data or not? After going through several tools, Microsoft’s adCenter tool seems to be the most capable keyword tool. So, what does MSN think about you?

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adCenter Top Tool for Vanity Related Keywords

Microsoft adCenter’s conversion tracking code did not function between July 8th-14th due to an upgrade to their system. Hence, if you use the code, you will not have any conversion data inside your adCenter account for that time frame.

The code has since been fixed; however, Microsoft recommends that you update your code by doing the following:

1. Sign in to https://adcenter.microsoft.com.
2. On the Campaigns tab, in the Campaign column, click an existing campaign for which you have conversion tracking enabled.
3. On the Select an order page, in the Order name column, click an order.
4. Click the Order Settings tab.
5. If the Enable conversion tracking check box is not already selected, select it.
6. In the conversion tracking code snippet window, click Copy Code.
   This will temporarily copy the revised https://adcenter.microsoft.com code snippet to your computer clipboard.
7. Re-paste the code snippet within the HTML of the Web pages you want to track.
   You can paste the code snippet anywhere between the HTML body tags. We recommend placing the code toward the bottom right of the page so it does not detract from your page design.
8. Repeat steps 1-7 for any other orders that have conversion tracking enabled.

Note: Whenever a conversion script isn’t functioning for a few days, of course the data will not be transfered to your account. Therefore, when you run reports that include the affected date range, keep that in mind when you look at your cost per conversion data.

MSN’s new adCenter is still in beta. However, there are already several excellent sources of information for this product.

Here’s my favorite resources to find additional information:

MSN Official Resources:

• adCenter Blog
• adCenter Official FAQs
• Converting PPC accounts: How to convert Yahoo Search Marketing or Google accounts into MSN accounts

Unofficial Resources

• Webmaster World: MSN adCenter Forum
• adCenter Insider
• Search Engine Watch: MSN adCenter Forum

In the forums, keep on the lookout for the nick ‘adCenter411′. She is an official MSN resource for helping the community to utilize adCenter effectively. (She’s also a very nice & helpful individual who is usually hanging around the conferences).

Google’s new demographic targeting is for Site-Target only. I keep hearing that it’s better than MSN’s targeting and that’s it’s the new killer application. Please remember these items:

• MSN’s demographic targeting is for PPC
• MSN’s targeting includes passport data, user registration data, and additional channel based information. They own much of this information
• Google’s demographic targeting is based off of 3rd party data that anyone can buy (comScore).
• Google’s targeting is strictly for site-match (i.e. their CPM buy)

While it’s a great step towards where Google needs to go - it’s very different from MSN’s PPC. It’s more similar to Yahoo’s Marketing Services, which allows these options:

• Demographic Targeting
• Geographic Targeting
• Behavioral Targeting
• Time-of-Day / Time-of-Week
• Database Targeting (match multiple databases)
• Yahoo also has filtering options

I was hoping that one could edit a current site targeted campaign to add the new targeting options, but it’s not possible - one must create a new campaign from scratch.

Here’s a view of the major demographic options:

(Sorry for the screen shot looking a bit odd, based on Google’s layout, it was the easiest way to show the options.)

So, please don’t think of this as a comparison of MSN’s adCenter and Google
AdWords.

• They are very different.
• Act very differently.
• Reach people differently (banner vs search)
• They will convert differently.

Yes - it’s a good offer from Google AdWords.

No - it’s not an adCenter killer.

adCenter is again increasing the percentage of MSN search results which display MSN ads as opposed to Yahoo Search Marketing ads.

Snippet of one of the emails I received via MSN about this announcement:

I want to share some good news regarding the adCenter pilot - we’re now ready to increase traffic to adCenter campaigns. We’ll be increasing traffic by approximately 70% from our current levels.

If you’re a pilot user, this means that your budget may be impacted due to the increase. Also, as more traffic is directed to adCenter, you should expect a decrease in traffic from your Yahoo! Search campaigns. You will be notified about the size and timing of additional traffic increases as we move towards launch.

The traffic increase is scheduled to begin on Monday February 27th. Pilot users should begin to see an impact on Tuesday February 28th, however, it may take several days to perform the increase.

Time Warner has been holding talks with both Microsoft and Google over AOL, sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters and other media.

The Journal said that, under negotiations between Time Warner and Microsoft, AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft’s MSN service.

Source: MSNBC

At present, this is a long term rumor at best. MSN is still in an invite only beta, and they’re still working on scaling out their product. At earliest, it will be a q1 06 product release, with the possibility of being q2.

I had dinner with part of the MSN team last night, and they were discussing the challenges they expected, and other’s they never considered in part of running their own PPC program. There are a few major difficulties with running a ppc engine:

1. Scale
2. Customer support
3. Distribution
4. Click Fraud

At present, when MSN rolls out with MSN only distribution, their PPC product will reach as estimated 12-14% of the internet audience. A deal with AOL would put them as a solid player (hence, improving the distribution requirement above). It would still make them the 3rd largest PPC distribution, but it’ll become a property that everyone needs to learn and take advantage of.

MSN has some very interesting demographic targeting options that are much more sophisticated than the other PPC programs. It’s not a simple program, but it allows a lot of control the other PPCs just don’t have.

Still a rumor, but this deal would be a major victory for a PPC program that has yet to be tested on a mass scale.

The PPC arena will only get more interesting and more competitive in 2006. MSN’s entrance will further complicate the entire PPC issue. This will probably be good for agencies, and more difficult for those doing PPC in-house.

While it strikes a blow against Google, it is a small blow. Google’s content syndication makes it the largest distribution environment on the entire web. A single distribution change will not affect them to a large extent, but it will help MSN enter the game with something to offer new advertisers.

MSN’s pilot program is suppose to show, for any given keyword, MSN results 25% of the time and Yahoo Search Marketing results 75% of the time.

MSN was having issues with it’s Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM, formerly Overture) feed, and MSN pilot advertisers that had the same keyword in both programs only received MSN exposure for a brief period of time.

If you had a keyword on Overture, and not on MSN, then your listings were displaying as normal. The error only occurred if a keyword appeared in both PPC engines.

This was making it so that several advertisers were receiving less exposure with the pilot program than they would normally receive.

As MSN only accounts for roughly 14% of all searches, some advertisers didn’t see a huge drop in impressions, however, other’s saw a large drop in impressions (presumably B2B businesses which MSN has a decent query share).

The latest checks showed MSN had fixed the display issues and showing both YSM & MSN results as expected.

MSN’s pilot PPC program has a keyword research tool.

The tool has three functions.

1. Inventory with the same keywords.
Functions like the Overture suggestion tool, however, it contains the search queries for two months instead of just the previous month.

2. Inventory with related keywords.
Functions like the Google Keyword Sandbox for the ‘expanded broad matches’ or ‘other words to consider’. These keywords might not contain your original keyword, but keywords that are horizontal in nature to your query.

3. Page Spider
MSN Launched the spider before Google did (On 10/20/05 Google launched a site spider keyword selection tool). This spiders a webpage and brings back keywords based upon what the spider found on a particular page.

Overall, the functionality was quicker than Overture, slower than Google. However, as it’s a beta system, bugs and query times are expected to be a bit erratic.

Hopefully, with Google and MSN launching new keywords tools - the competition will be good for the advertisers. If the search engines get into keyword research tool wars, the victor is the advertiser with additional data to work from.

Compared to the competition, it’s the best so far. If Google were to bring back counts in their listings, it would be the best based on speed and having multiple category suggestions. However, counts are a very wished for commodity, and that simple addition puts MSN as the top keyword selection tool among the PPC engines at present.

MSN has talked about an October 18th launch for a few months.

Everyone is use to Microsoft’s postponement of new products.

To the surprise of some, and to the expectations of others, MSN PPC debuted on October th.

The program launched with an email to advertisers saying that the system had launched, but that one had to talk to MSN to get one’s logins (according to the email, it looked like they were expecting some not to want a login).

A quick email, and the 19th I’ve got a meeting with MSN. Their customer support and quickness of action has continued to surprise me - in a very positive way.

Welcome to the game, MSN. It’s been a long road, but the program is very welcome addition to online marketing.