ExpertAdWords

Usually, I don’t like to vent and would rather come up with solutions then complain about problems but I’m just fed up with MSN AdCenter.A while ago I uploaded a variety of campaigns into there system and that went well enough. The structure was similar to Google. The import went well enough, the mechanical part of the experience. From there it just went DOWNHILL.

Slowly, my keywords started to get rejected. Not all of the keywords. If there were 10 keywords in an Order, then five might be rejected. The reason they were getting rejected was the website copy. Why didn’t they reject ALL the keywords in the Order? Why only five? It doesn’t make any sense?

I spent some time checking out their editorial guidelines and these are some of the conclusions I drew that may have affected the account:

1) The first reason they gave was that the page contained “military references”. The site was about attacking weight loss and the only sentence that might have been flagged was a metaphor.

2) Second, there may have been embedded <div> tag, which to the untrained eye, may have looked like a pop-up. It was a coupon for free shipping that popped up in the corner of the page, hovering over the text, for new customers.

I would call up and talk to a representative about the problem and they would agree with me that there was nothing wrong with the Order or copy. But then, AdCenter’s appeal process is just a mess. You’d have to have an Account Rep email you because they didn’t have an email contact on their site or an online upload form (I think they had online contact form but no file upload). Then after a week of no action, I’d call them and they’d say they had never received the file.

All in all, the process is just frustrating and it seems that everyday, I’ll get a message that a couple more keywords have been deactivated. I’m spending between 15k and 25k a day at Google and I can’t even get an account rep at MSN.

On they other hand, I think that most advertisers are as frustrated as me. Competition is really low and the ads have a really good click through rate. I’m going to try to continue to work with them, but AdCenter is just a huge pain.

It’s interesting to think that MSN created their own barrier to entry for advertisers by having such a messed up and obstinate advertising process.

While Google does not allow different Display and Destination URLs, Yahoo Panama has not caught up and still allows you to use different Display and Destination URLs. As I posted before, according to my tests, a relevant Display URL can increase click through rate by .5%. So it’s worth checking out and trying a number of different possibilites for your Display URLs.

Additionally, even if your using Google, there are a lot of different ways to present your Display URL and it is worth testing to see what is the most effective.

www.searchenginemonkeying.com
www.SearchEngineMonkeying.com
searchenginemonkeying.com
SearchEngineMonkeying.com

I think eventually Google will have to rewrite the rules on this one but for now, it works. Ever since Google really started cracking down on ads where the Display URL and the Destination URL didn’t match, I have been looking for a way around it. Our ads with really catchy display URLs generally have a click through rate that is .5% higher then our standard Display URLs.

I got our hosting guy to set our server to do wildcard subdomains. So the servers setup is comparable to *.website.com. Keeping in mind that the Display URL can only be 35 characters, I started writing subdomains that read like an additional line of copy.

• FindTheTruth.Website.com
• MoreInfoAt.Website.com
• ChicksDigMe.Website.com

Unfortunately you can’t use _ in the domain name but the message is still pretty readable.

The wildcard feature will even work if the consumer types in the wrong subdomain.