More on MSN adCenter

Posted by Josh on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006.

I have to say that I’m impressed with the pace of change at MSN’s adCenter, although they did drop one of my campaigns in a recent update. I’m even more impressed in that they called me to see how things were going. Try to get Google or Yahoo! on the phone. (Or try to get quality support from Yahoo! via their help center.)
The most significant difference in the latest rollout? It appears that ads can now appear in almost any country, although regional targeting is still only available in the US, France, and Singapore (are there regions in Singapore?). Other changes:

The interface has been cleaned up a bit, making it easier to manage campaigns.
Charting of keyword usage even before you add them to your campaign. Very cool! Chart by traffic trends, age, gender, geography, wealth index, or lifestyle.
There is a very nice keyword suggestion tool.
Bids can be adjusted for particular times, days, genders, and age groups.

There are still some quirks:

Specifying matching options is still confusing, requiring addition of columns which are subsequently omitted from keyword listings.
It’s not obvious how to setup negative keywords or if you can do so across an order.
The heirarchy of campaigns, orders, keywords (and ads) is still confusing. I’m spoiled by the clarity of AdWords.
The interface has lost some of its “wizardness”, which I find good, but there are still times when it’s not clear that a “submit” or “save” is required to apply changes.
The help feature has a bug in it so that I can’t use it.

While not ready for prime time, MSN adCenter is showing a great deal of promise.