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Microsoft adCenter UK Retail Event Review & Recap

Further to Mel’s mention last month we, the Creative Services Team, have been kindly asked to go into a little more detail about the adCenter Retail Day. So here goes... Following on from the successful adCenter Travel Digital Day in October, the UK Microsoft Advertising team decamped for the afternoon to the chic Charlotte Street Hotel in central London for the second instalment of vertical best practices, focusing this time on Retail . The aim of the day was to provide actionable insights into...(read more)

Recording of July Webcast with Program Manager Shamit Patel On adCenter API Version 5.1 Update

In case you missed the adCenter API Version 5.1 Update Webcast last week, you can listen and view it anytime online. Download the Live Meeting recording from the following zip file: http://adcentercommunity.com/videos/API_Live_Meeting_July_15.zip  For best viewing experience, use Microsoft Office Live Meeting High\-Fidelity Presentation format including video playback. Download size will be larger and may take longer time to download. Use Microsoft Office Live Meeting Replay for quicker downloads. Installing Microsoft Office Live Meeting Replay Wrapper provides a rich way to view the recording for this format. You only need to download the Replay Wrapper once per computer.

-Chris

 

Find your adCenter ad on Live Search: "Where is my ad?" Flash tutorial

Here on the blog I've been writing about a new section of the Microsoft Advertising website that can help you find your ad in Live Search results. The Find Your Ad pages include tips for what to do when you don't see your ad in Live Search results. Last month in Finding your ad on Live Search , I spotlighted the "Where's My Ad?" Checklist . This month I want to call your attention to the Where Is My Ad? Flash tutorial . During the research the team conducted earlier this year...(read more)

SES San Jose Convention August 18-22, 2008

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sanjose/

San Jose in the summer is the place to be. Not only is it the center of the famed Silicon Valley, home to the largest concentration of successful internet and high-tech companies in the world, it is also the location for this year's Search Engine Strategies summer event!

Summer Travel: Using local appeal to attract repeat business through adCenter

Like many outdoor enthusiast/ live music fans, my summer plans usually kick off in June with the annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, TN, followed by a road trip from my home in Seattle to Quincy, CA for the High Sierra Music Festival that’s held over the 4 th of July weekend. Not this year. The rise in gas prices have had a huge impact on my summer plans: last year, my flight to Tennessee was $100 cheaper. The road trip down to California is 725 miles one way -- with gas prices...(read more)

adCenter Analytics Beta Refresh This Week – Downtime Expected

We’ve been listening to your feedback and feature requests, and as a result will be upgrading the Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta this week with some tools to give you more insight about your website's visitor activity.

The new features will help you optimize your online and offline marketing campaigns for higher conversion potential.

Starting on Wednesday July 23, as part of the upgrade, adCenter Analytics will be unavailable for up to three days. During this time, you'll be unable to access your Analytics profiles. However, your website data will continue to be collected and will be available after the upgrade is complete.

After the upgrade, Analytics will offer these new features:

• A centralized, customizable dashboard where you can see key campaign performance indicators at a glance.
• New visitor Path reports, plus Top Entry and Exit Pages reports, to help you gain insights about visitor behaviour.
• Age and gender clusters that help you understand the demographic breakdown of your audience.
• A holistic view of campaign performance across all search engines to help manage your return on investment (ROI) on all your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Check back to our Web Analytics Blog for more details and deep dives on the new features next week!

If you want to sign up to the beta then please visit our adCenter Analytics page on our Microsoft Advertising site.

A New Microsoft Advertising Pilot Program for Web Publishers Now Open via adCenter

- We frequently get questions in the adCenter Community about our plans for a publisher program. We started a private pilot program earlier this year and are now inviting more publishers. Microsoft’s self-serve advertising offering for publishers is still under development and is currently in a private pilot phase, being tested by select publishers who met the participation requirements. The private pilot phase began earlier this year. A private, phased approach allows us to learn more about customer...(read more)

Help improve your adCenter campaign performance with adCenter reports

Now that we’ve covered some of the reporting basics , let’s discuss some useful reports and things to look for in those reports to help point out trends and find areas for account growth. Ad performance report CTR - The ad performance report is a valuable report to run on a regular basis because it can help you to point out which ads are not performing. Having underperforming ads in your account can pull down the quality and CTR of your campaigns and cause them to cost more. So, if we run an ad performance...(read more)

2008 adChamps London Recap

On Friday, June 13th we hosted the 2nd round of adChamps, this time hosted in London under the watchful eye of our very own Mel Carson . As expected, the event was a huge success from sharing upcoming launches, to gatherng feedback from advertisers to help impact the way we do business. The following is the first of a few videos recapping this year's event and what some of our advertisers experienced....(read more)

Introduction to adCenter reporting

Have you ever gotten in your car and started driving without a destination in mind? If so, it probably wasn’t the most efficient use of your time. The same can be said of running search campaigns without using reporting. Reports are like the road map of the search highway. They can show you where you’ve been, and also where you are going, if you know how to spot the trends. This post is designed to give you some good tips on how to get the most out of that little "Reports" tab in adCenter...(read more)

Techweb and O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit, San Francisco, November 5, 2008

 

http://en.oreilly.com/web2008/public/content/home

The commercial web is now a teenager—it's been fifteen short years since Marc Andreessen released the Mosaic browser. To put this in perspective, television as a commercial medium reached its fifteenth birthday in 1956—the year Elvis Presley made his first appearance on national TV. National news broadcasts were still in their infancy, "As The World Turns" debuted as America's first half-hour soap opera, and "The Price Is Right" began its dominance of the game show genre. Commercial grade videotape recorders emerged, portable black and white television sets were introduced, and the first local color broadcast aired in Chicago.

SES returns to the Chicago Hilton on December 8-11, 2008

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/

Chicago in December. Awesome!

SES Chicago features presentations and panel discussions covering all aspects of search engine-related promotion, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Mobile Marketing. Learn the tricks of the trade, from best practices and tactics to strategy and branding.

[cal12/08/2008

Reminder: adCenter API Live Meeting today at 1 PST for Version 5.1 update

Reminder: Sign on for our Live Meeting today at 1 P.M. Pacific Time and ask questions about the Version 5.1 update.

 

-Chris

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Sign up to test the adCenter Desktop Beta

We're piloting a new campaign management application, the adCenter Desktop Beta , that enables you to manage your adCenter accounts and campaigns from your desktop. The adCenter Desktop Beta allows you to: Quickly navigate through multiple accounts Copy and paste keywords, negative keywords, match types and bid amounts from the adCenter Add-in for Excel into the Desktop application Bulk edit multiple items at once (bid prices, destination URLs, ad group targeting, etc.) —within or across groups...(read more)

BlogHer 2008, San Francisco, July 18

BlogHer's annual conference is like no other -- it is the thrilling diversity of the blogosphere come to life!

Featuring technical labs, educational workshops, intense discussion sessions, relevant sponsors, speakers from every corner of the blogosphere, established and new, and plenty of opportunities to network and socialize.