MSN how can you get it so wrong?

Am I the only one that swears at the screen?

[webpublisher]

Please tell me this....

Why when I sort my orders by number of clicks does MSN AdCenter forget this customisation as soon as I click on a link to look at an order's settings.

I find I am taking 5 clicks to do something that would take 1 with Adwords.

How can a company like MSN get this so wrong! It is beyond belief.

Even when I click on an order I have to make a couple more clicks to get to the keyword bids. Surely this is something that should be accessible straight away.

I can spend hours in Adwords - happily working away - no problems

Compare tihs to MSN - 2 minutes and I'm swearing at the screen.

Amy I the only one - surely not?!

[BriGuy20]

Remember, it usually takes Microsoft at least 2 stabs at something before it becomes vaguely usable (Windows/Internet Explorer). :)

[edited by: BriGuy20 at 6:22 am (utc) on July 12, 2006]

[adCenter411]

Hi everyone,
The adCenter product team is investigating the issue where customers are seeing "error #1" when they try to save changes. Is this still happening for you, or are you able to save without error today?

Thanks,
adCenter411

[jbgilbert]

I posted this in another thread, but nobody (including adcenter411) seems to use that thread, so here goes again...

Beware of the adcenter conversion tracking. After days of trying to figure out why conversion tracking was not working properly, I found out this from the support team:

Conversion tracking will only work if the searcher/clicker is using "certain builds" of IE6 -- It works ONLY for some releases of I.E.6 (not all) -- NOT FireFox, NOT Opera, NOT any other browser. They also told me that the cookie (for catching latent conversions following clicks) is a cookie that is good for 30 seconds..... can that possibly be right? 30 seconds?

Got that one wrong! Stats are showing constant growth in use of FireFox in the masses and huge growth for the more tech minded internet users. Plus, I believe there are quite a few ie6 builds and some (possibly many) that are not supported.

[rstein68]

It was much improved today. I saw it a dozen times as opposed to hundreds. It was completely nonexistant in the morning and then it started to reoccur later in the afternoon. I left the browser open for about 10 minutes and I was then able to save and continue working.

[jbgilbert]

A new explanation for why AdCenter conversion tracking does not work......

Today I received an email from MSN, and I quote:

Earlier this month (July), Microsoft adCenter went through some system upgrades which included changing our homepage from [advertising.msn.com...] to [advertising.microsoft.com...] .

If this is true then that means EVERY conversion tracking script we (and EVERYBODY else) installed in the last year is BROKEN!

Come on adcenter411..... can you help us out here?

[adCenter411]

Sorry for the delay here - I am looking into this and I'll post here later this afternoon after I find out details on this conversion tracking issue.

Thanks,
adCenter411

[adCenter411]

Thanks for your patience here. I checked on the status of this issue, and the development team is working on the possibility of a back-end fix for this.

In the meantime you can manually fix this by updating your tracking code from referencing adcenter.msn.com to reference adcenter.microsoft.com. You can get the code snippet on the Order Settings page.

I am sorry about this inconvenience.

Thanks,
adCenter411

[edit] added location of code snippet

[edited by: adCenter411 at 9:50 pm (utc) on July 13, 2006]

[Great White Shark]

Why is it that when I ad keywords to an order group there isn't a save button to save the keywords? Why is it that I can save only 100 keywords at a time? I usually have to click the continue button, enter a bid then go back to the order group to input more keywords.

[Great White Shark]

Why is it that when I ad keywords to an order group there isn't a save button to save the keywords? Why is it that I can save only 100 keywords at a time? I usually have to click the continue button, enter a bid then go back to the order group to input more keywords.

[Alex_Miles]

Some things that would enhance Adcenter immensely.

Duplicate keywords.

When I used to enter keywords at Google, if I accidentally entered two the same, when I saved my keywords the duplicates would dissappear. Adcenter just gives you an error message way later and you have to delete them one by one.

Match types.

Life is too short to be entering match types individually for individual keywords. I need to be able to 'select all' and then apply a match type. I think about 40% of the time I spend at Adcenter is spent doing this manually. I use a graphics tablet so I'm quick too! I dread to think how people with just a mouse manage.

Approval time.

I don't know what it is, but any longer than 24 hours is too slow. Markets are *fast*.

Payment.

You need more payment options than three credit cards. Especially if you want to do business internationally. There are cultural reasons why some people do not use payments that attract interest, and this is going to be a problem for one client I intend to bring over.

Keyword suggestion tool.

If there is one, I haven't found it. Not that I can't think up enough keywords, but other people might want one.

Demographic pricing.

If there was a 5% option too, I'd be more click happy.

And a couple of compliments!

Your site is easier on the eye than any other PPC I've seen so I'm psychologically more inclined to spend time there.

The fact I'm in the UK but can use $ is a huge advantage over Google. It means I can choose prices in 1c increments not 2c due to exchange rate issues. When you are bidding around 10c for a term, this means a lot.

[edited by: Alex_Miles at 11:54 pm (utc) on July 16, 2006]

[breny]

Alex--the keyword suggestion tool is on the dropdown menu in the same window where you add keywords. I think it says "find similar keywords" or something like that. It's on the same drop-down menu as the import/export function.