What’s new with Microsoft adCenter?
It’s easy to get lost in a world where AdWords seems to dominate the marketplace. However, not only is adCenter a great product (with an amazing community) they also have continued to innovate. Here’s a roundup of adCenter posts that makes it easy to catch up with the new features and improvements that have come out of adCenter over the past couple months.
SEM Beginner Series: Ad Copy Importance, Best Practices and Resources
The Silent Click – Increase Brand Awareness Online – adtech New York 2009. While this post is a recap of an adtech session, there are some charts in here that contain some great info on display that every marketer should read. In addition, there is a link to a full PDF report that shows more details of this information – great stuff.
Microsoft adCenter Fall 2009 Upgrade: Tutorials and What’s New in the Learning Center – adCenter desktop is a great tool for managing your adCenter account on your computer.
Microsoft adCenter Fall 2009 Upgrade: Improvements and New Features. Microsoft has an ad preview tool, the ability to set default time zones (this is great), and some other improvements.
Here’s an older post on this site that contains links, resources, and a comparison chart to help understand adCenter as it relates to AdWords.
Q&A Should You Bid on Your Competitor’s Name or use Their Name in Ad Copy?
Should you use your competitor’s name as a keyword? What about using their name in ad copy? Is there a difference in using it on search versus the content network? These questions boil down into a few sections that we will address:
- Can you bid on their name via the search engine policies?
- Can you use their name in ad copy?
- What should the landing page look like?
Legal Note: We will walk through these questions as it regards to current search engine policy. That does not mean you still cannot be sued by your competitor – it just means that these are the current guidelines. As always, consult your lawyer before trying this at home.
Can you bid on your competitor’s name via the search engine policies?
The first question you need to answer: Is your competitor’s name trademarked? If no, then you can bid on their name via policies in most countries. If yes, here’s the quick and dirty rules to trademark policy:
Google AdWords Trademark Policy
- If the word is not trademarked, you can bid on it
- If the word is trademarked, but the owner has not filed an exception request with Google, you can bid on it in most countries (US, UK, and Canada included) and use it in ad copy (more on ad copy below)
- If the word is trademarked, and the owner has filed an exception request then you can bid on it in most countries; however, you cannot use it in ad copy
- In the US on Google.com only, if you sell a product, fix a product, sell parts for a product, or are an informational site, then you can bid on the keyword and use it in ad copy
Note about Trademarks: All three engines allow the ‘generic’ use of a word, sometimes called the ‘dictionary use’ where a word could be trademarked, but if you use it in the generic manner, then you can bid on it and use it in ad copy. For example, there are hundreds of companies who have incorporate the word Apple into their trademark (Apple records, Apple vacations, Apple computers, etc). If you are an orchard farmer and sell Apple the fruit, you can use the word Apple in both ad copy and as a keyword.
Learn more about the AdWords Trademark Policy:
The Bottom Line: Can you bid on an AdWords trademarked word?
On Google, if you are in the list of countries where Google does not investigate the use of trademarks as keywords, then you can bid on your competitor’s name. If you are not in that list of countries, and the competitor has trademarked their name, then you cannot bid on it.
AdWords Content Targeting Tip
If you have decided you want to bid on your competitor’s name, and that it’s a name that often ends up in the news or in other coverage; you might want to use it as a content targeting term so you can capitalize on press and other coverage of your competitor’s products.
As the content targeting uses all the keywords in an ad group to determine the ad group’s theme; and then show your ad – if you were to put all of your competitor’s into a single ad group – your targeting would probably be pretty poor as the article would have to cover most of your competitor’s for your ad to be shown. (More on content network targeting)
To create an ad group where your ad is only displayed when the page’s content is about your competitor’s and their products, then just include your competitor’s name as a keyword, and additionally use a few of their top products as additional keywords. If you have several competitors, create a separate ad group for each competitor for better targeting purposes. For instance, the keywords in your ad group might look like:
- Competitor’s name
- Competitor’s product
- Common words associated with the product
If you use the content network strategy, employing image ads instead of text ads can be to your advantage. Text ads have little recall value. However, images and video have much higher recall values. Therefore, utilize image ads so you can start to associate yourself as the top competitor and a company that someone should evaluate before engaging your competitor.
Yahoo Search Marketing & adCenter Trademark Policies
Yahoo and adCenter have very similar policies. If you are:
- Reseller of a product
- Informational, non-competitive site
- Dictionary use
You can both bid on the word and use it in ad copy. If you are not one of the above, then you cannot bid on the word and use it in ad copy.
If you use adCenter broad match and Yahoo’s advanced match options for triggering keywords,then you might find some variations of words that trigger your ad to be shown for a competitor’s name. For instance, if you were Microsoft and sell the Zune; you might be able to broad match MP3 player, or similar words and end up showing on competitor searches (such as iPod) without actually bidding on the term.
More Trademark Policy Resources
- SEL article: How will Google’s new TM policy affect you?
- On-demand Webcast: Trademarks, Brand Terms and PPC Advertising: Updates You Must Know
Now that we have a starting place to examine the policies, lets examine the impact of using competitors’ name as keywords and in ad copy.
Can you use your competitor’s name in ad copy?
Fist, let us revisit the fair use of trademarks in the United States. A trademark does not give you absolute protection over a word; it gives you limited protection.
In the US, you can use someone else’s trademark (Fair Use) if (this is US law, not search engine policy)
- Identifying the owner
- Describing own products
Example: Comparisons
- Mercedes could say they are rated higher than BMW (according to some study) because they are using the BMW trademark to identify the owner.
Example: Newspaper Ad:
- Best Buy show an image and use the word ‘Apple iPod’ in a newspaper ad because the trademark usage identifies the trademark owner.
Example Describing Products:
- Powered by Intel
The second example, newspaper ad, is one of the reasons’ Google gave when announcing their change to US policy.
In the US, the government recommends the ‘sniff test’ as the first line of determining infringement. The sniff test is:
- Does the the use of the trademark confuse the customer?
In the above example, the use of ‘official apple store’ in an ad copy that goes to a non-apple owned website is definitely confusing. The ad makes a claim that is not true. This would fail the sniff test.
In the Best Buy Example, the use of the trademark iPod Touch would be considered non-confusing as the word is identifying the trademark owner, which is a ‘fair use’ of a trademark.
If you use your competitor’s name in ad copy and claim to be the competitor then you would be confusing the customer and should not use the word in ad copy. This is by far the most common question I’m asked. Someone is using our name in ad copy, our name is not trademarked, what should I do? Obviously, you should trademark your company name. However, this is where many companies decide to sue other companies outside of Google’s influence. Be careful of identifying your company as your competitor’s company with confusing ad copy.
Using your competitor’s trademarked name in an ad copy as a comparison, “Mercedes is rated higher than BMW” is not allowed by the search engines even though it does fall under one of the fair uses of trademarks in the US. However, if your competitor’s name is not trademarked, then you could write an ad copy making that claim. Please note, if you make that claim you must have 3rd party verification on the landing page.
Overall, using your competitor’s name in the ad copy is not a good idea at the moment. Personally, I’m waiting for Google to adopt the all of the ‘fair use’ for trademarks before going down this route. However, if you consult with your lawyer, and feel protected, then you could do it (if your competitor’s name is not trademarked). Just note, you could be sued, however, there’s a good ‘fair use’ defense available. And furthermore, this is my opinion – I’m not a lawyer, just trying to help out the marketers. Talk to the lawyer first.
If you are using your competitor’s name as a keyword or in the ad copy, what should your landing page look like?
If you make a flat out claim, such as ‘we are better than competitor 1’, then your landing page must have a 3rd party verification on the page (such as a JD Powers study that found your car is rated better than your competition or a Consumer Reports showing your car safety standards is better than your competition). However, if you are just using your competitor’s name as a keyword, then you do not need that information on the landing page.
If you are able to use the trademark as a keyword because you are a reseller, fix a product, or an informational site; then your landing page must contain information related to that trademark. For instance, Best Buy must link the ads that say ‘iPod Nano’ to a page where they sell iPod nano’s.
If you are just using your competitor’s name as a keyword and sending the user to a typical page on your site, you will commonly see two things:
- High bounce rates
- Low quality scores
Why? Because the Psychology of Search tells us that we do a search to find a piece of information. Since your landing page does not contain that information, then the consumer is going to bounce off of your website.
Secondly, the quality score factors include relevance of keyword to ad copy to landing page. In this case, neither your landing page nor ad copy is relevant. Therefore, your quality score should be low.
How do you increase your quality scores when bidding on competitor’s name?
This is simple, make your landing page related to your competitor. Landing page quality and relevance affects your quality score. If the page you are sending traffic to has nothing to do with your competitor, then the page will often be found non-relevant and negatively affect your quality score. Therefore, you need to make the landing page for your competitor’s name related to your competitor. This does not mean you need to give away your competitor’s contact details and send searchers that direction.
To make your page relevant, create a comparison chart. Make column one the comparison features, column two you, column three your competitor. Very simple. If you make this chart and still see ‘landing page not relevant’ for your keywords, than add a paragraph or two about your competitor.
Do not disparage your competitors. Avoid slander based lawsuits. Make your product look better by creating an honest comparison chart and showcasing why you are better than your competition. This is a good exercise even if you are not buying your competitor’s name. You should understand your product and your competitor’s so you can arm your sales force with the proper responses to potential-customer questions.
Write a couple paragraphs about them so that the search engines can read that information to understand that your landing page is a comparison chart and the consumer can learn about your competitor on this page. This may make your page relevant, will then allow your keyword to have a decent quality score when advertising on a competitor’s trademark.
How to check if a name is trademarked
This might be the most aggravating part of the entire process. None of the search engines have a public list of trademarks. In their defense, this is why:
- Trademarks are assigned by geography. A word might be trademarked in the US, not trademarked in UK, or only trademarked in Alabama, US and not the rest of the country.
- Trademarks are assigned by industry (it’s a bit more complex, but this is the simple version)
So, technically a search engine would have to have a list that is both industry and geographically relevant.
When you submit an ad copy to Google that contains a potential trademark, you’ll be asked to file an exception request. If you use the word ‘apple’ and you sell apple the fruit, then you’ll submit a request such as ‘it’s the dictionary term, it’s not trademarked for fruit sellers’. If you were to submit an ad copy for ‘Home for Sale’; you would say that the word ‘home’ is not trademarked for the real estate industry.
This area of research is murky at best. If you are the industrious type and wish to try and discern if your competitor’s name is trademarked, you can use the USPTO.gov (US Patent & Trademark Office) trademark search to try and find the trademark.
Conclusion
If you want to avoid controversy and lawsuits, just don’t bid on your competitor’s name or use their words in your ad copy.
If you want to maximize your exposure, showcase your offers when someone is looking at your competitor, then in many countries, on Google, you can use their name as a keyword.
Be very careful using your competitor’s name in ad copy as you can still be sued even if you abide by the search engine policies.
To really protect yourself, draft a keyword use policy. Have your lawyer approve it. Then follow those policies.
If you use an agency, make sure they have a copy of your keyword policy and are also following it. This can help keep you out of legal trouble you didn’t go looking for because some agency decided to be aggressive with their keyword research.
How trademark law will be applied online is still being shaped. There have been many lawsuits and there will be many more. Just because you are following search engine policy does not mean you cannot be sued – it just means the search engine may approve your keywords or ads.
Search engine trademark policies are still being created. As laws emerge and the courts rule, the engines will adjust their policies. Just because you follow all the rules does not mean your ads and keywords will be approved. It will give you a better chance of having the keywords and ads approved.
Microsoft adCenter & Google AdWords Resources to make your life easier when Yahoo Search Marketing is replaced by adCenter
With the recent Yahoo and Microsoft agreement, Microsoft will take over both the search results and PPC ad serving from Yahoo. This gives Microsoft adCenter enough search share, you need to open an adCenter account and move your Google info there.
adCenter is a fantastic platform, with many features similar to Google. The biggest difference between Google and adCenter is that at Google, all the targeting options live at the campaign level. With adCenter, the targeting options live at the ad group and campaign level.
For instance, on Google you need to set a budget per campaign. However, you should separate search and content reach into two different campaigns; and thus you need to split your budget. On adCenter, you can have one budget for the campaign and then ad group is search and ad group 2 is content within the same campaign.
While most of the adCenter features are also in Google. The notable exception is adCenter’s param system (resource links below). With adCenter you can have multiple variables that show up in ad text for each keyword. It’s amazing how custom you can build your ads per individual keyword. Google only has basic keyword insertion, and the only thing you really get to choose is the casing.
Google does have many content targeting options that aren’t available on adCenter. With video ads, image ads, fantastic placement options, Google’s content network is fantastic. adCenter just doesn’t have the reach or the options with the content network.
Below is a chart that has some base comparisons between Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. Below the chart is a list of adCenter resources to help you learn their system quickly.
| Google AdWords | adCenter | |
| Match Types | broad, phrase, exact | broad, phrase, exact, content |
| Negative keywords | campaign, ad group | campaign, ad group |
| Keyword Bids | Keyword, placement, ad group | keyword, ad group |
| Content bids | ad group, placement | keyword, ad group |
| Budget | Campaign | Campaign |
| Budget types | daily | monthly or daily |
| Budget spend | accelerated or standard within day | same options, different names but can choose daily or monthly |
| Content enabled | Entire campaign | Campaign or ad group |
| Excluded sites | campaign or ad group (new UI) | campaign or ad group |
| Location targeting | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Targeting by time of day | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Changing bids by time of day | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Changing bids by day of the week | campaign | campaign or ad group |
| Conversion tracking | yes, account | yes, account |
| Ad types | text, image, video, mobile | text, mobile |
| Ad serving | rotate or optimize (campaign) | ads are automatically optimized to show the highest CTR the most |
Here are a collection of articles that should help ease the transition to get started with adCenter:
Importing AdWords campaigns into adCenter
adCenter Match Types
Dynamic Keyword Insertion
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion on adCenter
- Using Params (adCenter allows some interesting customization of the ad text by keyword). To see these, in your ad group, select a keyword (or multiples) then hit the ‘add or edit keyword button’. Here you can edit the params by keyword. If you are doing a lot of param editing; then use the excel add-in.
adCenter excel-ad in. Similar to the AdWords Editor
adCenter adExcellence program. Similar to the Google Advertising Professionals program. Lots of good videos.
adding parameters to links. Similar to AdWords value track-like options.
adCenter community portal. This is where adCenter shines. Microsoft has an amazing set of individuals who have done a lot of hard work in engaging the search community. I can’t say enough good things about Carolyn Miller, Mel Carson, Jeanie Dumont, and many more over at Microsoft. These people are not the ‘old conceited’ Microsoft. They are the humble, smart, knowledge, eager-to-help, Microsoft could win if they adopted their attitude, Microsoft. Even if you didn’t use adCenter, you should follow this community as there’s just good info there regarding search and advertising in general.
Microsoft adCenter Resources
I don’t talk about adCenter very often; however, Microsoft has a strong PPC platform that is worth testing to see how your ads perform.
Microsoft launched a learning center for adCenter recently.
adCenter has a fantastic community site.
I’m also a fan of their analytics solution. Here’s some screenshots and a review I wrote up about adCenter analytics earlier this year.
Give adCenter a Try When..
Most PPC marketers start with Google, add Yahoo when they max out Google, and then add Microsoft when both of those are maxed out.
If you’re a small business managing your own account and not spending a lot of money; that might be the way to go (time is money).
However, if you are a dedicated PPC manager, or a business with a high spend, or a high percentage of your client recruitment from search – you should test out adCenter to determine your returns. You might want to move a slice of the Yahoo/Google budget to Microsoft permanently. The one thing about adCenter is they know they are the small player, have engaged the community exceptionally well, and have done many things right in helping people to transition accounts to adCenter.
Other Microsoft adCenter Resources:
- Excel plug-in (easy keyword research tool)
- Bulk upload your account (you can use AdWords Editor exports to make this simple)
- Microsoft adLabs – If you’ve never visited this site, use your Friday afternoon to learn some new (and fantastic) tools.
Microsoft’s ‘Gatineau’ Analytics Shows Statistics by Age, Gender, Occupation, and Geographic location
Microsoft has been testing their new free analytics program for a while and a new round of invites has recently gone out to those wishing to try out analytics.
A few important troubleshooting tips if you have an invite:
- You may have to visit the page a few times before the signup process runs smoothly. It looks like the initial errors where the pages were erroring out have been fixed.
- Ensure the email address of the invite is the exact same as the email address in your adCenter account
- Once you have the code and place it on your site, you have to wait for statistics to accrue before you can add advanced options such as:
- Goal setting
- Outbound link tracking
- Event tracking
- Be patent. While trying to write this post, the system has been unavailable about half of the time I’ve clicked on a link within the analytics interface.
The most interesting feature is the ability to segment your analytics by age, gender, occupation, and geography. This is most likely associating website visits to passport accounts and other Microsoft data which is similar to how adCenter’s targeting works.
While Microsoft doesn’t know everyone’s information, and the ‘unknown’ category is by far the largest, the additional data can be quite useful for slicing and dicing data.
Screenshot of segmentation by Age. (click image for full view)
Screenshot of segmentation by Gender. (click image for full view)
Screenshot of segmentation by Occupation. (click image for full view)
Screenshot of segmentation by Geography. (click image for full view)
While the interface is still a bit basic and erratic, the above segmentation data is not available in any other free analytics service that I’m aware of.
Using Microsoft adCenter Analytics combined with Microsoft adLabs can give you some powerful analytics to help engage your audience in new and meaningful ways.
All About Microsoft adCenter’s adExcellence Program
Microsoft’s adExcellence program is similiar to the Yahoo Ambassador or the Google AdWords Professional program.
The program is still in beta, however, to quality for the program one must pass a test and have a minimum amount of spend (which is pretty low) in an account to quality for the program.
The original test wasn’t extremely difficult, and I’ve already talked to Microsoft about some of the questions and changing them up a bit. Many of the items were around PPC best practices; which is good to see as I don’t think everything on the test should be centered around just one product; but around how a good PPC campaign is setup and managed.
One item Microsoft is set on doing (and the other engines need to follow suit) is creating a directory of it’s members.
These certifications don’t mean much (nor does any certification) without awareness. While I applaud the engines for creating programs that lets consumers know if one is qualified, the consumer awareness about these programs is exceptionally low. Hence, consumers don’t actually seek out these professionals to run their campaigns.
Engines should showcase these programs to raise awareness. Once their is awareness, then there is also an additional benefit for one to learn any of the PPC programs to the satisfaction of the engine to earn one’s qualification.
The second items the engines need to follow up with is support for the individuals who pass these programs. People who take (and pass) these programs are the most likely candidates for being product evangelists.
At present, there is no special contact phone number, email address, or skywriting for one who has any of the search engine qualifications. If one happens to be on another team, then one can get support through the normal channels. However, if one does not have an account rep, then one still has to go through the normal channels for support. These programs and qualifiers should be embraced by the engines.
Yahoo is currently in the process of restructuring their ambassador program; and Microsoft is still in beta, so maybe there is hope that some of these support channels will begin to emerge.
A Look into adCenter’s Quality Score Rankings
Quality score remains one of the more ambiguous ideas on the web. Google has become much more transparent with sharing information about AdWords quality score.
Microsoft adCenter has also announced it will use a quality score formula to determine placement. I’ve had some discussions with Microsoft digging into the full algo, however, here are some high level facts that will help you optimize for adCenter’s quality score.
- How closely related the keyword is to the ad’s content (single factor)
- How closely related the query is to the landing page (single factor)
- How closely related the keyword is to both the ad and landing page (combined factor)
- The serial chain of query to ad and then ad to landing page
- Uniqueness of the ad to other ads on the page. adCenter tries not to show duplicate ads on the page (this is an interesting one).
Overall, it’s fairly similar to Google’s.
The concept is quite simple: If you are enhancing the search process, then ads rank well. If you aren’t, then ads rank lower.
adCenter announces Upgrade
We’re now taking the next step forward. On Thursday, April 26, 2007, the current adCenter site will be upgraded with these new features, including:
- Improved navigation. Easily go to any campaign or ad group in your account via our navigation enhancements.
- Bulk edit keyword settings. Quickly make updates to negative keywords, dynamic text and destination URLs for all of your keywords.
- Enhanced campaign imports. Import new campaigns or make updates to existing campaigns with our new, robust, import feature.
- Microsoft Excel download option. You can now download all of the adCenter data sets in an Excel format.
- Full text search. From any page, find campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads that contain all or part of a search query string by using our new full text search feature.
- And more! Watch our webinar to learn more about how to make the most of these new features.
Source: adCenter blog
Microsoft adCenter Dynamic URLs
adCenter has some very powerful dynamic insertion commands for automatically passing data to an advertiser about a search click.
I wrote about their initial options a while ago when their dynamic functionality became stronger than Google’s dynamic link insertion.
adCenter recently updated their blog to go into some depth about passing these query strings. If you’re using dynamic link building, the entry is worth a read.
adLabs “Keyword Group Detector”
The first step to good keyword organization is to identify your ad groups. Microsoft’s adLabs has a nice tool in helping to first determine your ad groups.
The Keyword Group Detector tool lets one input a keyword and then see the related items to that keyword.
It’s similar to the often forgotten Google Sets project.
This can be very useful for finding related keywords, or starting to group similar words together.
A search for a word like ‘marketing’ will bring back related words such as advertising, ads, etc. Words that are more likely to be adjectives than ad groups.
A search for a more commercial term such as ‘ipod’, brings back ‘ipod mini’, “i-pod shuffle”, “apple i pod”. These different terms are better served in their own ad group.
The tool works off of sorting data, so it doesn’t care about spellings. Some will like this as it’s the reality of searches. Other’s won’t like this as they don’t want to make ad groups from misspellings. Either way, be aware that some of the keywords will be either misspelled or jargon.
In the above example, “ipod” can be seen to be spelled as: i pod, ipod, and i-pod. It is important to understand those are the words being searched even if they don’t translate into being an ad group.
If you are just starting down the road of organizing keywords, this can be a useful tool to do some research.
Google AdWords
Seminars for Success
Learn about Google AdWords from experts hand selected by Google.
These seminars will educate advertisers on the creation and management of successful AdWords campaigns.
Upcoming Seminars:
Washington DC AdWords Seminars March 9th & 10th
Phoenix AdWords Seminars April 14th & 15th
Learn More about the Seminars:
Seminar Information
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