AdCenter UK Is Now Live

[inbound]

Got the email at 8AM, had a few things to do but I'm off to see how MSN stacks up.

[dmorison]

Still showing "Not available in your market" when trying to signup here...

[inbound]

You need to type in adcenter.microsoft.co.uk and it will redirect to a page that allows you to set it up.

I found that out by calling, the guy was very helpful (what would you expect on a launch day) but was a little perplexed as to why the email link was broken.

[badass101]

Shouldn't they rebrand it AdCentre for the UK market? ;-)

[inbound]

It looks as though people are in for a long wait for ads to show.

The automated checking of ads has not completed for some ads that went on a few hours ago, speaking to the reps there's quite a big queue. 48 hours / 5 days are the two timescales I've been given.

As for the speed of adCenter, it was good earlier but it's ground to a halt (hence I'm back posting here instead of getting through the campaigns)

Does anyone know how the bidding works? I've not seen anything too clear on it yet.

[Angelis]

It actually went live at 00:00 this morning although they still havnt changed everything to get it working correctly. The system for those who havnt used the US version is a lot like Overture in how it works but feels a lot more like Google.

e.g. Max CPC's but there is a editorial process.

Well worth a look, the system is nice to use although seems a little slow and I would imagine with a lot more people using it, it might get a bit sluggish.

I think its live in line with Microsoft / MSN's LIVE brand, the live.com site seems to be going through some changes as well today.

[Alex_Miles]

If you are used to Google you are going to need a little more patience with Adcenter. I was speaking to Erika from MSN last night (she phoned me - you don't get that level of service elsewhere) while she sorted out my keywords.

I get the impression they are a bit overwhelmed! There is a huge influx of Google refugees right now. They are doing their best to cope with a product that could have used a little longer in development.

Right now it takes longer to do stuff in Adcenter than it does in Adwords, but I don't care. I can hand over my cash without feeling like I'm paying for the bullet I'm going to get shot with.

[Calc Richmond]

Agree that the adCenter is looking pretty neat - Microsoft did a good round of recruiting from lesser PPC Engines and have good scope here to make up market share - esp. when/if the much rumoured merger of yahoo! and msn search functionality takes place.

[QualityNonsense]

Adcenter's been so slow as to be unusable for the last 36 hours. It keeps crashing my browser when I get to the final stage to confirm keywords.

Seeing as I can't publish any campaigns, would any of the more experienced Adcenter users care to share their top tips for Adcenter newbies? Please tell me there's an easier way to choose keyword matching than tick boxes...

[tsinoy]

anyone knows how to look at your own ads if you are not living in the UK?

I tried using proxy and have not seen any of my ads at all.

[macavity]

I don't seem to be able to edit my existing US orders to add msn.co.uk targeting to them, the "Select a display language and region for your ads" drop down box is greyed out and shows "English - United States" only. If I try to create a new order then I do get the UK option but with thousands of orders I don't relish the thought of duplicating them all one at a time (now that my QuickLaunch window has closed). Is there a way round this I'm missing? Thanks.

Mac

[wackybrit]

I went through the signup forms, put in the CC number, hit to continue, and it took me back to a new, totally blank form. Great :) Think I'll wait a few days. I hope they don't charge me for that.

BTW, anyone else notice you can change the currency to USD and only pay $5 signup? Will this let you bid in USD on the UK site? I find this usually works in your favor with Adwords.

[adCenter411]

QualityNonsense -- Are you still experiencing issues when you get to the confirm keywords page? Is this happening for anyone else?

One way you can set your match types without ticking them each individually is to import your list of keywords via XLS or CSV. You can get the template for this by going to the Manage Keywords page and choosing "import or export keywords" in the drop-down menu. Then you'll be able to download the template, and fill it in with bids for each match type you want, and import it back through the manage keywords page. Let me know if that helps.

Thanks,
adCenter411

[QualityNonsense]

AdCenter411, I can now edit keywords, but the problem continued well into Tuesday (UK time) via both my office and home ADSL (different ISPs).

Thanks for the bulk upload tip, that'll be very helpful.

[wired in asia]

Hmmm.. went to adcenter.microsoft.co.uk where I got re-directed to the US adcenter sign up page.

Logged in and under the tap 'order settings' tried to adjust 'Select a display language and region for your ads'. But failed.

I am using FireFox (latest version).

Anyone, any ideas, plssss;-)

BTW: Still baffled how a company like MS can't get the AdCenter functionality sorted.

[Lottie]

I'm surprised that MSN UK Search have just removed all Yahoo! SM ads overnight.

I expected there to be a handover period where the MSN ads were showing top, and Yahoo! ads below, at least whilst they sort out the teething problems and give people a chance to create their campaigns.

[deep_alley]

Would like to know how you can look at your own ad in msn, especially if you have set it to run in another geography. What msn does is that it redirects you (looking at IP I think), to the relevant domain of msn depending on country. How can I look at my ads that I have targeted to run in other countries?

[webpublisher]

Is it possible to set different bid amounts for a ad targetted at US traffic and one at UK traffic. As far as I can see you have an option to select the country at order level but you can't set up a different price for each country.

If when I orginally set up my orders I selected all for countries does this mean the ads now show on MSN UK. I ask because this seems logical but I can't see the ads on MSN UK.

Is MSN UK Adcenter a different login url to the main US one - I'm very confused about this launch.

Any help would be gladly welcomed.

[QualityNonsense]

You have to target by country *and* language. If, say, you target the UK but with US English (instead of UK English), your ads only receive a tiny percentage of the impressions they should.

Alas, it is only possible to set language when you create an ad order; you can't change it on existing ad orders, meaning you have to recreate it from scratch to change language.

For reasons best known to Microsoft, my ads seemed to appear on [search.msn.com...] far before [search.msn.co.uk....]

[webpublisher]

QualityNonsense thats for your feedback.

- this is very worrying if we don't have the flexibility to target UK traffic on exisiting ads.

[QualityNonsense]

I contacted adCenter support with the same question at launch, as I couldn't work out my ads weren't serving. I was told:

If you want your ad to serve in [search.msn.co.uk...] search results you will need to select a different distribution channel available at the order settings page... You will need to create a new campaign because this option can only be selected once and is set at the campaign level only.

Though, bless 'em, they've been very helpful. My contact emailed a few days later just to make sure I'd got up and running OK.

[webpublisher]

Not being able to quickly turn on UK ads is a real problem for users. It must surely reflect in a slow up take in financial terms.

I shake my head in disbelief.