If your Ad is appearing and disappearing, perhaps the following
Ad performance tips can assist:
Prorating is a temporary Ad performance consideration in relation to the
budget. During the first month of campaign creation the budget
(IE: $100) is what it appears to be (it's $100 to be "spread across
the month" or $100 "spend until depleted"), though only when the
campaign is created on the first day of the month. If the campaign is
created on the 15th, then the $100 appears to adCenter software
as $50 and your $0.75 bid is walking a tightrope, don't be surprised if
the campaign/s goes into budget pause. What if you create a campaign
on the 27th of the month?
Solution: You can temporarily set the budget to "spend until depleted" and
the budget will recalculate a daily spend every midnight based
on your origional $100, as though we are spreading across the
remainder of the month. Or you can increase your budget such
that it works-around the temporary prorating, this allows you to set
budget to "spread across the month", then reset your budget to $100
on the first day of the new month. This phenomena only occurs during the
first month of campaign creation, so a rule of thumb could be to
double or triple your budget (keeping an eye on spend) and let it
run until the first of the new month, then reduce the budget to your
origional intent, the budget runs as usual.
Participation Rate. The budget summary report has a "participation rate"
column. It will provide "% of serves per searches" based on the
budget in relation to other factors: bid amount, # of adgroups,
and possibly # of keywords (if you have 100's/1000's). Try
running a budget summary report for the past 7 days.
If the participation rate is lower than 90%, you may want to
increase your budget, if it's 50%...your Ads are serving
1/2 the time...and you know to increase the budget to double.
Relevance is important to the position an ad serves but isn't as
dramatic over time as participation rate. If the keyword is in the copy
of the Ad and the landing pages have relevant content, the Ad will
serve in a higher position...but not to appear and disappear as the
above participation rate would cause. CTR history plays a role on
performance/position similar to relevance. If you had numerous non-performing
keywords in an Adgroup over the course of a month or greater; Ad position
will drop slightly. Solution. CTR (click through rate) history can be reset by changing
an Ad slightly and re-submitting. Isolate non-performing keywords in a
seperate adgroup; since they may be searched at some time, especially
your Model #'s and SKU's.
Quality. Here's the latest, if the quality ranking algorithm determines the
searcher is not arriving to thier relevant product or service via your
Keywords>Ads>Landing pages with reasonable effort (based on
published adCenter guidelines)...it may halt all campaign efforts in an
account, at any time; only to be considered for re-activation once changes
are made to the elements in question. Senarios halted: Ads directing searchers
to alternate search engines and/or a page of links that doesn't include
good relevant copy, or being drawn into a free offer that requires 2-3
steps to recieve something that is stated in terms and conditions (having to
pay for something to recieve something free needs to be clearly stated upfront),
and advertisments using copious amounts of keywords (100pages worth)
that are irrelevant. If a searcher is wanting to shop for and buy...running shoes,
why shouldn't she/he have a good shopping experience?
Ad position will vary (after considering participation rate, prorating and
quality algorithm) to different positions on one or two pages depending
where it is origionally positioned via bid etc, it could be low on one page or go
high on another, but should typically vary one or a few positions
per search or your refreshing. Experimenting with bids on high performing keywords
(IE: "web hosting", "insurance") and searching for Ad position, goes a long way
to understanding position behavior. Note, SEO's sometimes use automated bidding
software to compete for position at different times of the day; this can account
for other Ad position variances.
May seem like a lot to digest for managing a campaign, though for most
advertisers it's a matter of basic setup and administration. Keeping in mind
MSN Sponsored Links have the "Higher Conversion Rate" when comparing
to other search engines. Also, with thier recent purchase of aQuantive also
DeepMetrix, the future quality, performance, precision and profitability on
adCenter and MSN can only get great!
Hope this helps.
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Notes from adCenter Blog:
Although results may vary for individual advertisers, several independent third party analyses have shown that Microsoft adCenter produces good conversion rates in comparison to the other major search engines. These studies don’t mean that advertisers will always see better results on Microsoft, nor that advertisers will never encounter traffic quality problems and will need to report them. However, these studies should be taken as evidence that Microsoft has a high quality network and is working hard to maintain high standards of traffic quality:
- WebsideStory (US, Feb. 2006, www|websidestory|com) reported that MSN Search* commanded a 6.03% conversion rate, higher than the conversion rates of Yahoo! (4.07%) and Google (3.83%).
- Atlas Quality of Click Study (UK, 2007) found that conversion rates from Live Search were, on average, 35% higher than those of the other engines.
- Online Shopper Profile (France, 2007) found that although customers coming from Live Search made up 6% of searches, they accounted for 11% of conversions.
- Nielsen NetRatings (UK, June 2006 and Feb. 2007) found that referred Live Search users spent 27% more time on-site than those of the other engines.
- Compete (US, Compete Quarterly Conversion Benchmarking Study, Q4 2006, Compete, Inc.) found that Live Search converted at a higher rate than did Google across all vertical industries reviewed, including B2B (1.6% vs. 0.5%), Travel (1.9% vs. 1.7%), Consumer electronics (1.3% vs. 1.1%), and Retail (2.6% vs. 2.3%).
- Nielsen NetRatings (US, Dec. 2005) reported in a study of the travel industry that $1 spent on MSN Search* drives $37 payback, compared to $21 payback on Yahoo! and $22 payback on Google.
Need help
I am at a lost and confused why is it taking so long. Can anyone help me?
Thank u
