Ahhh the MSN ad center, it’s Microsoft’s answer to Google AdWords & Yahoo Search Marketing and the only way to show your text & graphic ads to MSN & Live search. Considering that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, has defended the software maker’s decision to invest heavily in its unprofitable online business, approximately $500 million of additional spending for fiscal 2009, you would expect MSN to be overtly aggressive not only acquiring Internet marketeers, such as myself, but also servicing their needs.

I manage a fairly significant portfolio of both small and larger advertising clients, but it seems that it takes and act of congress to get my ads approved on the MSN network.

So, why do I go through the trouble of advertising with MSN?

1. It converts, when you can get your ads approved. I have found it to convert about 20% higher than Yahoo and 45% better than Google, though its traffic is MUCH lower than either engine.

2. MSN ad center has less competition on various key word groups, I assume its because my competition has less patience than me continually resubmitting traffic requests.

3. Once it set up it takes very little maintenance to maintain paid search rankings. Again, I assume this is because of the previous reason. Their approval guidelines work against MSN’s best interest.

My advice to marketeers looking to advertise on MSN ad center

• Start with a good glass of Merlot and soft music, because soon my friend you too will be frustrated.

• Spend time in exploring the MSN ad Center. Not all of the links you were looking for will be in easy to find places, so take a little time and explore each page.

• Below are my Top tips to solving your Ad Center woes…
  • When creating your key terms be careful with plural/singular terms – MSN sees many of them as the same. Though this only seems to hold true with English terms.
  • Use a suggestion tool like word tracker, Google, or Yahoos word suggestions to compile your list.
  • Limit your key words too many keywords will be rejected. It appears that Ad Center has a limit of 10,000 per submission.
  • Though I do not see MSN’s Ad Center being as picky as Google in directing clicks to a contextually relevant landing page it could not hurt. Especially when trying to convert visitors into buyers.
  • Avoid Duplications – MSN “sees” words such as “of”, “for”, “an”, “a” as dupes.
  • Export an existing order and use that as your base template.
  • Keep your ad titles and keywords under MSN’s limits. Check your character lengths especially if using {keyword} and {params} as you might dynamically insert a phrase that’s too long. As a reminder the limits are as follows: Ad Title = 25 chars. Description = 70 chars. Display URL = 35 chars.
  • When doing a mass upload to the Ad Center remember that the file size limit. Check that your .xls or .csv is no larger than 2mb.
  • If uploading a “.xls” file check that the other tabs in the file have no data within them.
  • If your title or description contains a comma then make sure that you encase the data within that column with double “quotation marks, like so”
  • Add the MSN Ad Center domain to your list of trusted domains within your browser settings to avoid any security issues.
  • Use Internet Explorer as your browser when spending a lot of time in MSN’s Ad Center. For some reason the MSN ad center and the Firefox browser doesn’t play well together. There could have been other factors at play, and I would never say that MSN would ever not play fair, but it seems I encounter less online submission errors or browser crashes when using the IE browser over FireFox, when it pertains to the ad Center.

• If your ads were denied, try try again. If there explanation of disapproval made no sense, its not suppose to, welcome to the world of off shoring your customer service . In order to fast track the approval process try 1) resubmitting the ad after making any modification to the copy. If there is any consistency with MSN’s editorial approval process, it is the inconsistency of their approval process that can work both against or in your favor. 2) Contact support at 800-518-5689 (from 9 am – 9 pm PST), trying to email them is a VERY big waste of time. Though the person on the other end sometimes seems like they have better things to do than service your account, it pays to me overly polite. If you can find the right person to answer your call, they will even give you insight and suggestions to improve your search campaign.

Steve Ballmer, if you REALLY want to compete with with Google without getting your ass handed to you, please, take the following suggestions to heart…..

• Your ad review process absolutely sucks. I appreciate the fact that I have received numerous apologies from Ad Center staff concerning the inconsistent, arbitrarily disapproving of my key words, but it seems that a little standardization in ad approval training world go a very long way.

• Please drug test the team or individuals that put together your Ad Center interface. Pretend that web masters would like comparative traffic pricing and history on the search ability of key words. If your at a loss for creative ideas, copy Yahoo’s interface.

• Start acquiring additional search partners. You have great traffic, just not enough of it. There are 45 potential acquisitions of smaller search networks that would make a big difference to your bottom line. Call me for a good M&A list, for a nominal fee … sorry started the selfless plug early.

• Embrace vice traffic sources. Google makes huge profits in catering to vice, I personally know several individuals that spend $10 million+ dollars per year in gaming, dating, pharmacy, and more. Taking such categories off of your flag list would do wonders for your revenues and traffic partners.

• Follow Google’s method and bot the target site. If the site is very relevant than set a lower base. If the web master is just key word squatting, then charge a much higher base. This will make web masters choose key words more wisely, and more importantly, give them higher e-commerce conversions if the landing page matches the contextual content that it was targeted for.

• I have lots of other suggestions for your Ad Center, but I am not feeling the love since I have had a few more ads disproved this morning, and its too early to drink…… damn.

About John Cataldi (Shameful Plug)

I am an avid technophile and serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in Marketing Strategy, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Traditional Media, and Mobile Marketing. I am currently the Chief Media Evangelist (CME) for media start-up, Adreka Advertising, an open media exchange to allow agencies and advertisers to target, create, syndicate, and track both traditional and interactive advertising. If you wish to contact me I can be reach at Adreka or through my contact page.