Paid Search

How to Avoid Microsoft AdCenter PPC Interface Hiccups Christine Churchil , KeyRelevance.com , Dallas, TX - Sep 14, 2010

The long awaited Yahoo-Bing alliance is in progress. On the organic search side, Microsoft's search engine Bing began powering Yahoo's organic search in late August 2010. On the paid side, the integration from Yahoo paid advertising platform to Microsoft adCenter is underway.

Microsoft adCenter is a young and evolving system. While much of the system is innovative and easy to use, there are occasional hiccups in using adCenter that you might not see in a more seasoned (and more tested) system. As AdCenter matures over time, these oddities will be corrected, but since many webmasters are transitioning to AdCenter now and are unfamiliar with some of its quirks, it's nice to know about a few of these so you know it's not you, it's the system.

This article describes several known "gotchas" in the adCenter that were present at the time of this writing (September 2010). Being aware of them can save you worry and help smooth your transition to adCenter.

Microsoft's AdCenter Ad Preview Tool Hiccups

Both adCenter and Google Adwords provide an Ad Preview Tool. Both tools allow an advertiser to view their ads when they are targeting a geographic region differently from their own. In addition, using the preview tool, doesn't add to the impression count or any cost to the advertiser. For advertisers doing geotargeted ads in Google, the ad preview tool has become a popular and helpful tool. The hope was that Microsoft's version would be equally helpful. Upon trying to use the tool in adCenter, we quickly noticed that was not the case. Below are descriptions of some issues the advertiser may encounter when trying to use the tool in Microsoft's adCenter.

Issue 1: the http vs. https problem

When logged into an adCenter account, the advertiser is in a secure socket layer (SSL) https browsing session to keep your data secure. You can confirm this my looking at the URL line at the top of your browser. You will notice that the URL starts with "https" when you are logged into your account.

For security reasons you want to be in https mode when you access your account. However, if you decide to use the adCenter Ad Preview Tool, some of the content is delivered by http (not https). This inclusion of non-secure http data on a secure https page will usually cause the browser to display the following warning message:

Seeing a warning message about security when you're logged into your account is scary. What often happens is the account owner, fearful that his secure information will be exposed if he makes the wrong decision, will cancel out by clicking the X in upper left of the box and not use adCenter's Ad Preview tool.

Due to the awkward wording of the message, even if the account owner is brave enough to choose "Yes" (or "no" depending on the browser and the wording of the warning message), then the delivered page is broken as shown below. Again, a broken page does not provide helpful information for the account owner.

Interestingly, the help text for the Ad Preview tells one how to work around the http vs. https issue, so MSN is aware of the problem. While it's nice that they tell the account owner how to work around the problem, but the burning question is why doesn't Microsoft just fix the problem with the tool since it's a known bug.

Lesson Learned: Read the warning message carefully before answering. If you answer incorrectly, you will need to close your browser (all windows, not just the current one), restart the browser, and log in to adCenter again in order to be able to see the ad preview information.

Issue 2: the screen grab vs. real information limitation

Let jump back to the Security Warning box the advertiser encounters if they try to use the adCenter ad preview tool. If the account owner selects "No" (or "yes", depending) at the question in the Security Warning box, then adCenter shows a screen grab (a non-clickable image of the results) for the requested search.

This is how Microsoft designed the tool to work. The problem is that a screen grab is of limited value. Using the Ad Preview tool may confirm that your ad displays, but there is NO indication which ad group or ad triggered the ad displayed. If the ad is being displayed inappropriately, there are no clues as to which ad group that needs to be corrected.

Lesson Learned: Use the Ad Preview tool to confirm that a keyword is working, but use a Keyword Performance report (exported to a spreadsheet), to search for specific keywords. If all else fails when tracking down inappropriate ad displays, your can turn blocks of ad groups off and repeatedly use the Ad Preview tool to see which ad group caused the ad to display. Note that pausing/resuming a keyword, ad group, or campaign might take several minutes to take effect.

ISSUE 3: Changing default bid in Microsoft AdCenter in an ad group causes "usage data from nowhere" to appear

One odd behavior in Microsoft AdCenter account managers have noticed with Microsoft AdCenter is that if you change the default bid on a keyword in an ad group, the usage data in your columns will change for no apparent reason. Obviously, since the columns are supposed to show historical performance data of your keyword, the data shouldn't change when modifying a keyword default bid. However in AdCenter tweaking a default bid will cause the numbers to change…at least temporarily.

To illustrate the oddity, we edited the data for a new ad group. We started with a new group so our historical data should show all zeros in the performance columns. If we change the default bid from $0.05 to $7.00, as soon as we hit the apply button the columns started showing usage data in the columns for CTR, Impressions, etc. There is no explanation where the data came from or why.

If you were managing this account, seeing your performance data changing on the fly would be very disturbing. The ad group in our example had not even been turned on yet. As you can imagine, seeing data for spend, clicks, impressions, etc. for an Ad Group that has NEVER been turned on erodes confidence in the system.

The graphic below shows the sequence of events that brought about the data from nowhere phenomenon.

The good news is the "data from nowhere" is a transient glitch in the AdCenter system. If you hit the "save" button to lock in the default bid change, the odd usage data will disappear and the real numbers return.

Lesson Learned: Ignore the transient data, and rely on the numbers only before editing/after saving.

ISSUE 4: AdCenter can't do math

There are several places within the adCenter interface where Microsoft is using faulty math. This is usually in places where they end up computing an average of averages. For example, in the below Campaign Summary, AdCenter has computed the average Cost Per Click (CPC) for the account by averaging the CPC's of each campaign. This is faulty math. In this case, they take the non-zero CPC values ($4.57CPC + $6.88CPC) and the 21 zero-CPC rows and divide it by the 23 campaigns in the list to come up with an overall account CPC of $0.50 rather than the correct calculation of $20.59 / 4 clicks = $5.15 Avg CPC.

This is more apparent when looking at shorter time periods and/or less popular campaigns because more zeros in the calculation bring the result down dramatically, but the problem exists in every calculation. This can be insidious because the answer computed when averaging the averages can often come up close to the correct answer, especially if the individual contribution to the number of impressions is close to the same for many campaigns.

This is a problem on the Campaign Summary page, Selected Campaign page (if the campaign has multiple ad groups), but is correct on the Keywords and Ads tabs of a specific ad group. Several of the Reports generated by the AdCenter Report tools have this problem as well. Here are the totals for the Campaign Performance Report:

The CPC here should be 46,314/1,596 = $29.02 (not $5.27) and in addition, the overall CPA should be $33.75 (not $0.00)

Lesson Learned: Caveat emptor. Knowing that this is an issue means that you will need to remember to compute those values yourself.

Issue 5: Geographic Targeting Search Box Returns Incomplete Results

Geotargeting ads is a great way for the small budget-sensitive business to make their ads more relevant and to control where the ads are being served. There is no reason for a local business to show ads in California if the business only provides services in Atlanta, Georgia. Geotargeting gives the advertiser the ability to only serve ads where they do business.

Microsoft adCenter's geographic targeting user interface is making progress, but it's an area where Google's head start is telling. One example where the user interface could be improved is how adCenter returns geotargeted searches within adCenter.

Let me describe what happens so you can see the issue. Suppose you are logged into your account and want to add geotargeted ads to display for a certain city. In the campaign settings under the geographic targeting, adCenter prompts you to select a city by typing in a city name and searching to see if it is in the database.

Lets pretend I want to include Huntsville, Texas in my list of geo-targeted cities, so I type in "Huntsville" into the query box. After I click on the search function, adCenter returns a list of 4 cities, but none in Texas. There are no indictions that there are other Huntsville locations included in adCenter's database and there is plenty of room on the page to display additional city names, so the advertiser is left hanging…confused. The graphic below shows you the results for a search for "Huntsville" from within the geotargeting menu:

For advertisers wondering what to do next, the answer is: if you are setting up geotargeted ads in adCenter, you often have to type in both city AND state to find the city you want to add. Not including the state for a city name that is in multiple states can result in confusing results. Hopefully Microsoft will correct this by making the list longer or prompting you to click for "additional results."

Lesson Learned: Be specific when entering city information for geo-targeting by including both the city AND state on a search.

Issue 6: Growing Pains

Microsoft's late decision to enter the world of paid search (having launched the adCenter in 2006) means they have had to play catch up. Developing a self-service ad delivery system takes years to perfect in the best circumstances but when the industry landscape is dynamic and evolving rapidly, hiccups within the system are to be expected.

What this means to the advertiser is that from time to time the advertiser will encounter periods where the user interface is unavailable while changes are being made to the system. The graphic below is a screengrab of what an advertiser might see when a section of the interface is undergoing maintenance.

An outage like this can last seconds, or several hours. The best advice we can give the advertiser is to expect the unexpected when it comes to adCenter. When you encounter an area that is down, use your time to be productive elsewhere. It can be maddening, but with the integration of Yahoo's paid search to Microsoft adCenter making the market share close to 30%, advertisers will have to practice patience. That is too big of a sandbox for marketers not to play in.

Lesson Learned: Patience is a virtue.

Christine Churchill is the President of KeyRelevance.com, a full service Dallas search engine marketing company that specializes in helping businesses succeed online. Christine and her experienced team of online marketers provide a holistic approach to marketing: increasing a site's visibility online, improving the user experience on the site, and maximizing the site's conversion potential.