Microsoft adCenter came to being in the summer of 2006. Generally speaking the advertising platform was greeted with open arms, but there were a few areas that were lacking.
One specific area of concern was how adCenter handled PPC ad rotation. There were no options, just a default “optimized” setting that displayed the ad with higher CTR more frequently.
Thanks to AdWords, savvy PPC advertisers already knew the benefits of being able to rotate ads evenly in order conduct genuine A/B tests for ad copy and to test KPIs other than CTR. Over the past six years there has been an overwhelming chorus of dissent towards adCenter for the lack of an ad rotation feature.
Finally, those voices have been heard. Even ad rotation is here!
The ad rotation feature is only available in the web interface or through version 8 of the adCenter API. That being said, it functions much as you would expect. At the ad group level, you have two options:
GitHub: Software description: a software to manage books in the computer (C#). →
As of May 1, Microsoft’s small and medium business brand changed its name to Bing, bringing the name and design in line with the search engine’s homepage.
People who use Bing for search are in decision-making mode, Microsoft revealed in a statement about the rebranding. The ad buying experience through adCenter for SMBs is now more cohesive with the search user interface.
“By aligning with the Bing brand, SMBs will better understand that they are buying traffic on Bing and Yahoo search,” a Microsoft representative told Search Engine Watch. “Many advertisers find the program through the Bing homepage, where they click on ‘Advertise here.’ This shift helps those customers follow a more intuitive path to what they are looking for.”
The Marketers and Agencies brand remains unchanged, identified as Microsoft Advertising. Citing a recent comScore Core Search custom report, Microsoft revealed in their rebranding announcement that unique searchers on Bing and Yahoo Search are likely to spend 26 percent more than the average searcher and 9 percent more than those using Google Search in the U.S.
In a direct jab at their top competitor, Microsoft also announced that “Microsoft and Yahoo have searchers you can’t reach on Google: 49 million unique searchers using Bing and Yahoo search (including Microsoft and Yahoo core search sites) do not use Google in the U.S.”
GitHub: Software description: a software to manage books in the computer (C#). →
Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have all pledged to fight the dominance of Google’s pay per click (PPC) advertising services in a venture of their own.
According to IT Pro Portal, the three have collaborated on a shared ad platform that allows advertisers to place ads on the sites of all three companies with a single buy option.
While advertisers can still invest in all three firms’ existing PPC platforms separately, Yahoo’s Network Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com and Microsoft’s Media Network, the new arrangement offers up some notable benefits.
For example, InvestorPlace.com says that “the amount and variety of unsold inventory in the ad pool and the potential reach of each ad have been scaled up enormously”.
It also says that a real-time bidding (RTB) system, can push the highest bids forwards when placements meet “defined criteria for particular website and user categories,” from any contract placed on the service.
In addition, the RTB allows for unreserved spaces from any of the companies to be filled by the others.
Yahoo and AOL’s inventory will be stored on Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange (RMX) while Microsoft’s is available on the Microsoft Advertising Exchange.
This article is more about investment in stock, however I think it should be included on this site because of the general public’s limited view point about Google being the only search engine.
Google’s earnings came as a huge blow to the internet giant, as rising costs and falling margins led to an important selloff in the stock driving its price down to values not seen since October 2010. A management reshuffling, with co-founder Larry Page taking the helm from Eric Schmidt after a decade, and the questioning of its dominance by competitors, from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook to Microsoft’s Bing, have cast shadows of doubt over Google’s future. Analysts and experts, though, seem to agree that higher costs are a near-term burden which will result in the realization of growth potential in the near-future.
Despite impressive top-line growth, Google’s stock fell 8.33% since it posted its first quarter earnings erasing about $15 billion in market cap. Apart from missing EPS expectations by two cents, posting adjusted earnings of $8.08 per share, investors were worried that Google is spending too much money. Operating expenses were up 56% to $2.84 billion, traffic acquisition costs (TACs) were up almost 20%, and margins fell to 37.6% from 41% in the first quarter of 2010. Bloomberg even noted that the company went on a “hiring binge” after Google announced it had added 1,900 people to its payroll in the quarter and raised salaries by 10%. “The concern is that the expense discipline may be leaving as Eric Schmidt steps away,” a Benchmark Co analyst told Bloomberg. (Read Google Misses Estimates, Triggers Sell Off).
