Next week, Tuesday, May 29th, Microsoft Adcenter will be live on the ShoeMoney aka Net Income Radio Show on Webmaster Radio. If you have questions you can call in, or ask them below in comments. They will have 4-5 team members so we should be able to cover any questions you might have. I know I have some questions for them but what say you?!?
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
Please ask:
“Why do they believe CTR rates are so low in comparison to other engines and what are they doing to improve this?”
just to clarify:
I have respect for the Adcenter program and the traffic I see from it converts … just want more, that’s all.
While I do not see the CTR from adcenter I do always see a better ROI. I think its because they do not have the MFA problem that Google has
Mainly I’d like to know why they don’t seem to be very serious about what they do:
1. Signing up for new accounts can be a nightmare with false validation errors, dynamic drop-downs that don’t always work, etc.
2. Cancelling an account should be made easier. If the balance has to be paid before deleting, then give the user an option to actually pay the balance, versus just waiting until Adcenter gets around to it.
3. When ads go live, get them live. The delays on Adcenter versus Panama and Adwords is discouraging.
4. Importing and removing keywords…you might be able to phrase this better than I, but it isn’t pretty.
I believe Microsoft can make it work, but I’ve been largely unimpressed thusfar.
Please ask them about their API. What does it take gain access to it, and why isn’t available to everyone?
On the left hand side, ask them to move the related searches below the sponsored searches, or move them somewhere else on the page, so there is more exposure for the sponsored searches – this would then hopefully improve the CTR.
Once they have done that, ask them why their bid estimates are so high
When will they get realistic estimates for there search traffic?
When will MSN stop removing relevant keyphrases for no reason at all?
Could they please remove that popup box which says “Your session has expired, login again” or whatever?
Its pointless – all we need is a login screen with a “Please login again” message in bold red instead.
Its annoying when working with a whole bunch of tabs in firefox. I’m flick between them loading sites and logging into accounts etc, and at least a few times each day that dam session timeout popup automatically swaps me back to that tab right when I’m doing something else.
Ask them if it’s true that in order to target countries other than your own, you have to open multiple accounts in other currencies in order to have access to those markets with your ads?
you should ask them why they count the {keyword:blah} as characters therefore your campaign cant be completed.
Looking forward to it!
I would like an in depth discussion of there QS algorithm and information to clarify how it will HELP affiliate marketers and not punish them!
Ask them when they plan to expand their KW research/suggestion tool. I told someone at AdCEnter it sucked and they said it was already imrpoved *gasp*…
My ROI on MSN compared to Google is a lot worse…This is for a real product too. Odd Eh? Everyone and every promoted site/item is different.
There are rumors floating around that they are joining forces with YPN to overtake Google in some form or another, was that just a bunch of crap floating around or was it true?
There are quiet a few good questions to ask here, what time is this thing I might have to tune in.
Thanks.
How can I upload a large number of keywords? (I have a 12k keywords campaign at adwords and overture).
Nice work Shoemoney. Not sure how you do it, but keep doing it.
I would like to know if they are still offering those $100 credits to start with.
I second that question!
Well I am wary of anything M$ puts their grubby little hands on, they ruin every market they enter be it the customers or the other businesses in said market, it will be interesting to see how this plays out, and will they use their monopoly in other markets to infulence this one.
Yes, I’m also interested in the free credits to test how it goes. If anyone has any coupon codes, please post them here.
it’s on my schedule NOT to forget and listen to the podcast. I’ll listen live this week.
Absolutely. I third it.
I’d love to hear from them some comments about targeting certain age groups and how they identify how old someone is.
My experience is just about the same–certain products perform well on MSN and others just won’t work with AdCenter…and you’d think you could predict which ones will do better but you can’t. So, I just try to test things out and keep a close eye on it–if it isn’t profitable then I yank the PPC ads. Same goes for AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, as well. Some do better than others.
Not sure if this is a new topic, but I tried to import a pretty big campaign yesterday (from Google) and noticed that their import template has changed. So their conversion tool spits out data in a different template than what I need to upload. The new template has twice as many columns (if not more) and is taking me as long to reformat as it would to just recreate the whole thing. Does anyone use the import function here? Or do you use the API? Perhaps I should just learn to use that…..either way, I think the template is a real pain. I’m kind of a newbie though – maybe those new columns are a good thing for people who know what’s up.
please disregard my last comment. i was talking about yahoo. sorry.
I have to agree with you, their keyword research/suggestion tool really isn’t that great. You’d think that they would be able to come up with more suggestions.
Yeah, can you get them to offer some sort of “special” just for Shoemoney listeners?
Yeah, different audiences.
I called them once and asked about it. There is a online form where you can apply (I can’t find the URL).
I applied but no one has ever contacted me about it. It has been about six weeks now.
Too bad I can’t listen to Webmasterradio.fm’s streaming feeds and can’t download the podcasts through iTunes anymore. I even e-mailed Brandy about it, but no luck.
agreed… the related searches do take away a lot of conversion. btw: lookin’ forward to the show.
well, I don’t think *their* monopoly is gonna be much more of a problem in the long run.
I’m pretty excited for this interview. I don’t mess with their stuff but it will be interesting.
Why do they have dynamic keyword insertion without the ability to provide a default keyword? This is a sorely needed feature.
Why would a blogger want to choose Microsoft AdCenter over all the other similar programs? What is Microsoft’s unique selling proposition?
How is Microsoft going to compete with the other services this year? Promotions?
http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter/api-interest-form
This may have come up in the show already, but I missed it.
great stuff yet again mr shoe