Microsoft’s latest developments: a little too late?

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November 9th, 2007 by Nick

I am proud to sit on the adChamps council involved in the latest developments to the adCenter platform. The latest developments are detailed below, but are MSN too late?

Project Gatineau has launched in Beta and advertisers are able to sign up for the Pilot scheme. US advertisers are being invited first, but please do indicate your interest so MSN can reach you quickly when they are ready to take International customers on. More information is available on the adCenter Blog and check out the Web Analytics Forum to see what people are saying about it! Ian Thomas discussed it at length on his blog feel free to take a look.

Due to overwhelming interest in the adCenter Add-In for Excel (formerly adSage), MSN are now taking stock, and are working together with the adLab team on a plan to bring this program to market in Europe, so keep an eye out on the Blog for further news in the coming months. This will significantly help with building and managing accounts within the adCenter platform in a similar way to Adwords Editor.

As far as adCenter is concerned, there have been a number of releases since June which saw some editorial features added, a daily budget feature introduced, and a default text capability built into the dynamic text insertion parameters.

Here is a list of what has been added since June:

• Inline editorial prompts, reporting enhancements, daily budget and default KW text
• Bulk management tools
• Negative KWs at the campaign level
• Copy ad groups and campaign importing
• Change in editorial terminology
• New home page, improved KW performance tab and integration with Virtual Earth
• Bulk management tools – including bulk submit of ad groups in draft!
• New click quality reports

Also great news is that a Creative Services Team has been formed to help advertisers get the most from their campaigns from an ad copy perspective. They’ve been blogging furiously on all aspects of creating killer ads and their tips and tricks can be located in the Ad Copy Best Practice category of the adCenter Blog – check it out…

adExcellence – The adCenter education and accreditation program is still in the works and the pilot should be starting in the UK by the end of the year.

Are MSN too late though?

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