The concept of using customer personas isn’t new in marketing, but it can be a valuable exercise in finding the right ad text that either compels or pre-qualifies search users to click. Depending on your advertising goals, you may want to consider several unique personas prior to even committing ad texts to a real time test. Read more…
Normally big news such as a Microsoft purchase of Yahoo would be left to normal news sites, but since the acquisition would have profound effects on the pay-per-click advertising market, I can’t pass up the chance to comment on it. From a holistic perspective, Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo comes as no surprise, as Yahoo has been floundering financially in recent months. From an online advertising perspective, Microsoft will try to position themselves as the only viable alternative to Google Adwords. Or so they think! Read more…
With the introduction of Placement Targeted campaigns in Adwords, now comes the ability to target and setup strategic bidding on demographic sampling as well. Although this feature concept is somewhat dated thanks to MSN Adcenter, Google Adwords engineers have finally caught up – but how accurate is the demographics information? Read more…
Microsoft has made some serious strides in an effort to win back confidence in their advertising programs, most notably Microsoft adCenter. In recent months I’ve mentioned that adCenter traffic accounts for a mere 1% of the total traffic across all of my managed pay-per-click campaigns. Whenever news breaks that Microsoft has secured more ad real-estate, it’s cause to celebrate. Their most recent acquisition of a share of Facebook is exciting because this could turn the tide for Gates’ baby. Read more…
Those marketing folks over at Digital Advertising Solutions at Microsoft recently sent out an e-mail to most current advertisers informing them Ipsos may contact them regarding a customer survey on adCenter. This made be think: are Gates’ advertising minions that disconnected from advertisers? Don’t they read PPC-Advice.com and other blogs on a regular basis? I guess not. Just in case the folks at Ipsos need to do some preliminary research for Mike Hard (real name, BTW), here is my list of the Top 6 Good, Top 6 Bad, and Top 6 Wishes for Microsoft adCenter. Read more…
If you’re like me and adopted Microsoft adCenter Content Network placements without resistance (to test the waters), you’ve probably noticed that the waters are pretty shallow. Not unlike PPC placements on SERPs, adCenter traffic just cannot contend with Google or even Yahoo. So here’s an interesting problem pointed out by Search Engine Watch forum members: how can one opt out of adCenter content placements? For those of you reading abstracts, click here to find out. For those of you that want to know why you should and shouldn’t consider opting out, continue on… Read more…
The final part in our three part series on pay-per-click search share focuses on the little search engine that could. Could be bigger, could be better, could be badder — could buy most of the Eastern Seaboard. Microsoft adCenter has come quite a long way in recent months, with a heavy push back into the PPC advertising market. Whereas Google and Yahoo dominate the US markets, MSN seems to favor Canadian markets.
See how Microsoft adCenter’s traffic is divided along our country’s borders. Read more…
Microsoft’s adCenter pay per click program is the newest kid on the block, at least this time around. You’ll still be hard pressed to find traffic estimates living up to their claims, but they do have some cool features that no other PPC program can match thus far. Demographics-based ad targeting is possibly the latest and greatest feature adCenter has to offer. You can now pay CPC premiums for clicks from your choice of user gender and age, on top of the old pillars of search including geographical location, time of day, etc. Read more…
