Microsoft is discussing some changes it has rolled out to adCenter over the past few weeks. They should be improvements to the platform, as the company says they’re all based almost exclusively on customer feedback.The company runs down the list of changes in a blog post.
Changes include:
- Ease of navigation in Web UI and Desktop: Menu redesign to allow for easy discovery of features
- Browser Compatibility: adCenter support for Chrome and Safari
- Improving Desktop Performance: Faster and more reliable experience in managing bulk tasks
- Historical and Aggregated Quality Score: Improves campaign performance by having greater visibility into quality scores
In addition to these, they have several features currently in testing with select advertisers:
- URL by Match Type: Beginning this week, we are introducing new functionality that will provide more precise control over advertiser campaigns. In addition to the ability to assign unique destination URLs for each keyword match type within the same ad group, advertisers may also assign unique parameters. The team is releasing this feature in waves beginning this week continuing through the end of October. Advertisers will receive a notification email at least one week before this feature is enabled for their account.
- Improved Location Targeting: Advertisers may now reach more relevant users in targeted locations with fewer steps. Also, advertisers can now leverage new advanced location options to target users by physical location or by their physical location and intent.
- Broad Match Modifier: A targeting feature that lets advertisers create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match, and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords help advertisers get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if they mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.
According to the company, advertisers should expect these features to be generally available soon. On top of all of this, the company is working to launch more interactive ad formats for mobile.
Last week, Microsoft announced an update to how it handles negative keywords.
adCenter, of course provides the paid search ads behind not only Bing, but Yahoo. Tthe adCenter portion of the companies’ search alliance is still rolling out to more countries. Last month, Microsoft announced the migration of Yahoo Search Marketing accounts in the UK, Ireland and France. IT has already been complete in the U.S. and Canada (though the organic search part is already worldwide).
In a recent announcement, Yahoo declared that Yahoo/Bing clicks are 14% more valuable than Google clicks, while also having 9% more ROI. This was based on data from Efficient Frontier (Global Q4 2011 Digital Marketing Performance Report).