MSN Adcenter traffic surge 22/3 23/3

Has anyone noticed an unprecedented MSN Adcenter traffic tsunami on March 22 and March 23?

Without actually touching my MSN campain, CTR and traffic volume has tripled during those dates (March 23rd being the best day), and overall traffic quality has doubled (measured in terms of clicks/conversions) – a compounding effect of 6x on conversions. I wish I could hold to this traffic forever!

However, the extra traffic stopped on March 24 and traffic is back to normal ever since. Again, without me actually touching the campaign at all. It seems that the extra traffic came from the MSN network membership zones rather than msn.com or live.com searches.

There are rumours that overall MSN traffic has been on an increase for some time now, however this does not explain such surges.

I think this might have to do with the MSN Adcenter team testing various components and ads over the entire MSN network. Kudos for the MSN team! Keep doing some more tests, and give us some more of this sweeeeeet traffic!

WebmasterWorld.com review

Webmaster World takes all the ease of use from a vBulletin forum and throws it out the window in favour of a board powered by BestBBS. It’s quite obvious that the owners of the site are trying to appeal to a different audience in their approach, and upon first impressions, they’ve succeeded.

Webmaster World looks more like an article resource site than a buzzing community housing thousands of members. But a forum it is, and for those who prefer content over appearance, this is a site which will rapidly feel like home. As you’d guess by the name, Webmaster World offers discussion for those looking to start-up or improve their websites. It could be an online business, a hobbyist site or just about anything in between.

It is presented rather simply with a list of selected topics down the left hand side, and an overview of the forums on the right. The selected topics are titled as “Highlighted Posts”, which essentially means the discussions that are elected worthy of inclusion by the staff team. You’ll typically find two or three of these per day, so it helps to get an immediate idea of what’s going on – whether you’re new to the board, or returning to check up on what you’ve missed.

So what are the main selling points of Webmaster World? Anybody who has dabbled in the arts of E-Commerce will be well aware that the field is literally seething in sub-topics and new technologies. Webmaster World, in a bid to provide a comprehensive coverage of the entire industry, has opted to include just about every forum imaginable on its site.

We have categories for the basic languages of development, in HTML, CSS, PHP, XML and AJAX. We also have an area dedicated to the so called Web 2.0 movement. As the Internet swings towards a new generation of development, you’ll find all the latest discussion on mobile technology, scaled down application and multimedia design.

Perhaps the most useful area of the site is the forum for marketing on the Net. Whether it is link baiting, PPC programmes, Google Adwords, Yahoo…you’ll find just about every noteworthy topic under the sun in this section of the board.

Given the huge breakdown of forums that we’re talking about, it’s quite surprising to browse through each area and see that almost every topic has a reply of some kind. The member-base is clearly large, and the experts are active in providing help for the troubled members. Despite that, the forums aren’t overflowing with information. You can enter a sub-category and track topics dating back a couple of months in the first page.

If you post a thread today, it won’t be buried under four pages by tomorrow morning!

Under each topic is a neat little line which describes more about the subject at hand. This makes it much easier to locate noteworthy threads, and you’ll spend less time tapping at the search function.

Webmaster World should be commended for sticking to its guns and offering a board that relies on unique content rather than tidy presentation. If you prefer this kind of approach, drop by and see what you think. There’s enough relevant content to be reading for days!

PPC bidding wars causing CPC inflation and ROI decline

PPC advertisers continue to report a decline in ROI on PPC spending. This phenomena is caused mainly by increased competition between bidders, driving keyword cost per click up and reducing profit margins for Search Engine advertisers. The proliferation of quality keyword databases such as Spyfu  - which continuously crawl search engines and expose advertisers’ long tail keyword lists to competing advertisers cause ultimately  additional competition on Google Adwords,  a higher average CPC, lower conversions and a lower ROI. The winners of increased advertiser competition on sponsored links are obviously the Search Engines themselves.

MSN explains how to recapture lost Adcenter traffic

The recent changes in quality score causing a major loss of MSN Adcenter traffic were due to the new ranking procedures.

Adcenter has provided some clues, which could help advertisers to understand the new algo.

“To ensure that we are delivering maximum benefit to the search user, we are doing the following:

• Assessing the content of the ad and landing page in relation to the user’s likely intent.
• Assessing the keywords that an advertiser selects in relation to the advertiser’s landing page content, to confirm that they are substantially relevant to both the landing page and the user’s search query.
• Trying to ensure that there is substantive content on the landing page to fulfill the user’s query.
• Assessing the duplicative nature of content in overall search results. In cases where there may be content that is duplicated within search results (including landing pages) Microsoft reserves the right to limit advertising of the duplicate content when it lessens the user experience.”

Kenshoo launches Kazaam SEM platfrom

Kenshoo  search marketing technology start-up from Israel are launching their innovative PPC management platform - Kazaam. 

Yesterday I met Andrey Shirben of Kenshoo.com and had the opportunity to see the system in Real time action. As many other SEM advertisers, I became used to spending hours on keyword research and manual bid management. Checking campaign stats is something I do several times a day. Adding keywords, changing bids and deleting non performing keywords is something that I do - manually - on a daily basis.

The Kenshoo concept is that their platform will change all that and make everything run on autopilot. The idea is that everything is automatically managed through the API from one central HQ - i.e. no more separate log-ins to Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter or YSM Panama.

 Kazaam has the ability to compose a relevant long tail keyword list from multiple sources,  Locate competitor ads and combine the good part of them to make a new ad, detect click fraud IPs in real time via its proxy server, and - most importantly - manage bids dynamically according to predefined bidding rules. 

For example: A conversion transaction value is set at $30 – the system can be set to lower particular keyword bids by $0.05 as soon as the spend on such keyword has reached $10. Lower it again by another $0.03 as soon as  spending has reached $25, and – either increase bid back to par if a conversion has been registered - or delete the keyword completely if no conversion has been made. A single Campaign Manager can use the platform to do this across fifty campaigns with thousands of keywords in each simultaneously.

The Kazaam reporting module has all standard reports as well as some unique innovations – e.g. Geo ROI report (using each click’s IP origin) - providing the ability to see which countries or regions turn a profit and which actually lose money – still not possible on Google Adwords itself.

According to Andrey, Kazaam was built for heavy duty users such as leading agencies and large affiliates or affiliate junctions. It is a cross channel flexible platform capable to adopt and accomodate any Search Engine Marketing operation. 

Kenshoo itself is a global company with a foothold in the US, Europe and China. The system is already used by several leading Agencies – McCann Erickson (Digital) and Adler Chomsky – a Grey Interactive Affiliate, as well as by several undisclosed leading internet merchants all with complex multi channel PPC campaigns. Rumors suggest that Kenshoo is planning a white label operation – which is under negotiations these days.

Kenshoo will be in Ad:tech San Francisco (Boot 6476) on April 24-26, 2007. Agencies in need of a cutting edge platform solution should contact them via email to set a meeting to test their system.

MSN Adcenter Content Ads upgrade

MSN Adcenter has launched its content network.

MSN: “Campaigns will automatically expand to include distribution to content pages within the Microsoft network, such as: MSN’s Health & Fitness, Money, Tech & Gadgets, Travel, and Windows Live Marketplace”

Updates re. results. soon. 

MSN Adcenter – Editorial policies getting tougher

MSN Adcenter is getting strict in its editorial policies. Recently it has started a re-review procedure of existing ads (which were either already approved or are still ”pending”) and disapproving them on editorial grounds. Sometimes a whole adgroup is put on hold until an ad is re-written. Usually (but not in all cases) a disapproval comes with a follow up email. The best advice is to watch traffic patterns carefully and make changes to ads on the fly.