MSN adCenter open to chosen advertisers

For a long time MSN has partnered with Yahoo! Search Marketing showing their advertisements for a percentage of the click. For one reason or another MSN decided to build their own PPC tool to show on their popular search engine MSN.com.

Competing with Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) MSN adCenter has opened to a select group of advertiser. Having tested MSN adCenter it offers very similar features to AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing in that an advertiser selects keywords and sets bids for each keyword. Each of the three Gorilla PPC companies offer their own bells and whistles. MSN has one thing in their favor in that they have watched the two competing services grow and change over the past few years. MSN adCenter takes a nice blend of both services and makes running large campaigns effortless.

When opening an MSN adCenter account you have a main campaign name which then includes Order Names. Order Names are groupings of keywords that all have a similar characteristic. In this case the similarity is that each term in an Order Name has the same ad title and description. URL's and bids can be different for each keyword. We have had the pleasure of working with an MSN employee who took the time to educate us on all the features and encouraged us to send our files of keywords to them in bulk. Bulk keyword submission is a must for all those that are serious about running PPC campaigns.

The reporting metrics are fantastic and by far the most comprehensive. The only feature about the reporting I don't care for is the fact that the reports are delayed for 24 hours. A lot can happen in 24 hours and ideally real-time reporting would be better.

So far the traffic has been very clean and converts very well. I would definitely recommend opening an account if you get the opportunity. MSN is currently still running some Yahoo! Search Marketing ads but I would guess that within the next 6 months MSN adCenter will be showing 100% of the advertisements.

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