MSN Adcenter-Anyone Using It Successfully?

[paulside]

Hi Everyone,

Just curious if anyone is using or has used MSN's PPC engine with success.

I've heard it's good for people selling physical products such as myself since MSN is geared more towards buyers and not information seekers.

I'm in the very beginning testing stages right now and would appreciate any tips or suggestions.

It seems very similar to Adwords only there is no quality score to worry about and obviously Adwords gets more traffic.

Thanks!!

-Paul

[sweetfranky]

Hi Paul,

I've been using it since it came out with great success. The only problem is that the volume is so low that it doesn't compete with the amount of conversions I get from adwords. My conversion rate is about the same. It's still way better than Yahoo though.

[paulside]

Originally Posted by sweetfranky

Hi Paul,

I've been using it since it came out with great success. The only problem is that the volume is so low that it doesn't compete with the amount of conversions I get from adwords. My conversion rate is about the same. It's still way better than Yahoo though.

I noticed the traffic is quite low but if it produces profitable sales then so be it!

How do you set up your adgroups? One keyword per adgroup? What match types do you use?

Yahoo isn't working out for you? What are your gripes?

[sweetfranky]

Originally Posted by paulside

I noticed the traffic is quite low but if it produces profitable sales then so be it!

How do you set up your adgroups? One keyword per adgroup? What match types do you use?

Yahoo isn't working out for you? What are your gripes?

I setup my adgroups using my primary keyword for the ad and then adding all variations to that keyword. So example:
My main keyword would be "car financing"

I would then tailor the actual ad to the keyword "car financing" and then add the variations to the keyword list like:

"car finance"
"car loans"
"car leasing"

The next adgroup would be "auto financing" and I would attach the additional keywords to it:

"auto finance"
"car loans"
"car leasing"

I really hope this makes sense. This should cut down the number of adgroups needed and still give you a high conversion rate.

As for Yahoo's ad network, I turned it off 2 years ago. They really are scumbags over there and will include your ads in their content network even if you tell them not to. I've also heard from others of them manually turning on and off different ads on your account. The final straw was that my conversion cost was double compared to that of Google and MSN. Until I start hearing good things again from them they won't get a dime of my money or my clients. Hope this helps!

[paulside]

Wow! That's pretty bad on Yahoo's part.

How many keywords do you start out with to test? Seems like with MSN you'll need a lot to speed up the process of finding those golden nuggets.

Is there a tool, like Adwords editor, for MSN where you can upload a lot of adgroups at once?

[sweetfranky]

I actually can't remember how many words I started with. I think I just added everything as I assumed it would work out as well as google. I would start with your keywords that already convert well in google and go from there.

Also, I think there is tool that allows you to convert your adwords keywords to adcenter format. I didn't use this tool but I remember seeing something like this. Haha, sorry, it's been a couple years now since I've built an adcenter campaign.

[warrice7]

I made my first CB sale with msn. The volume is low though. I will continue to use it because it is cheaper than google per click.

[paulside]

Originally Posted by warrice7

I made my first CB sale with msn. The volume is low though. I will continue to use it because it is cheaper than google per click.

Hey a fellow New Englander!

I do agree the volume is low but it's still part of the big three. Besides, everyone needs to learn other methods of marketing other than Google.

I was part of the mass adwords ban. I have no idea why since they won't give you the time of day. All my sites complied with Google's editorial guidelines and my adgroups all had very good quality scores. Any groups that weren't up to snuff I corrected right away.

Oh well. Life goes on!

-Paul