MSN to offer a large variety of support.

Posted: October 8, 2005

I’ve heard grumblings lately about MSN support, or lack of it. These grumblings are never tied directly to agencies, so it’s difficult to tell if these are from individuals who are small spenders, or if they are large agencies who don’t want their comments tied to their company.

I often like to play devil’s advocate, just to see both sides of an issue examined. My experience with MSN has been much different than the grumblings that I’ve heard around the ‘net.

First off, my initial experience with them wasn’t great. I had a few very productive early encounters with MSN, the sales office and the PPC team.

When I went to make my first major MSN buy, my sales rep had gone on leave and not informed me. I had 2 proposals sitting on the tables that were never responded to.

A few emails with the New York sales office quickly fixed all that. Within a scant three days, I not only had a new rep, they came to the office to visit, learn what we were doing, and to help us get started with MSN.

The proposal offers went smoothly. Due to the sales office having to send all the proposals through QC and to receive traffic estimates, it took about a week to have proposals finalized. In the offline world, this would be considered a very acceptable and quick timeline, in the online world, often we look at hours and not days. I was satisfied with the process; however, I can see those who only deal with the online world thinking it was a bit slow.

The IOs (insertion orders) went smoothly, and within a week the ads were live on MSN.

Total time, 17 days from meeting to live ads. That’s a pretty good timeline considering the scope of the 4 projects I launched with them.

As time grew near the October self serve launch date, we then had an online meeting with the MSN team who would be assisting in our account. The meeting consisted of our Search Engine Marketing Specialist; two vertical advertising specialists; a technical advisor; and our sales rep - a nicely assembled team.

Two weeks after that, our Search Engine Marketing Specialist flew out to Chicago from Redmond and we enjoyed a nice lunch while talking about the MSN offerings and just internet life in general. Thirty minutes after the meeting, we were invited to beta test the MSN API.

Yes, MSN is launching with an API. It’s in beta, untested, but when MSN launches to the public, the API will be QCed and ready for public distribution.

Both our sales reps, and our marketing specialist, have been very accommodating, helpful, and friendly over the past few months. Their support is very akin to how helpful Overture can be, with the exception MSN realizes they’re small, realizes they’re growing, realizes they don’t have a huge market share - but they are determined to become a player.

It was interesting listing to those who work for MSN who were humble. Often search engine reps can be a bit standoffish as they know they have what you want and sometimes make you work for it. In my experience, MSN has been the total opposite of that. They realize what they need, how to empower SEMs, what their current place is, and where they wish to go.

The entire MSN advertising process has been very seamless and very effective to date. I hope that as MSN grows, their PPC launches to the public, and their advertiser list grows that they continue to offer this level of support.

If they do - by virtue of support alone - they will be a major force in the PPC arena.

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