MSN Ad Center Blues

[jammybiskit]

Welcome to Microsoft adCenter, and thanks for signing up. To start reaching millions of Live Search users, please do the following: ... Go and jump in the lake

After reading some positive comments about conversion rates for MS AdCenter in WebProWorld and elsewhere I decided to bite the bullet and sign up.

So I paid my non-refundable £5($10) - it's twice the US rate here in rip-off Britain.

The email containing the startup instructions arrived soon enough so there I was, all excited and ready for a new adventure, poised to create exciting new ad campaigns to draw lots of qualified traffic from our favourite demographic at carefully targetted times of day between reruns of Frazier ...

Except there was no create campaign button.

And so it has remained for the last week and a half. No button, no campaigns, no extra visitors.

My-name-is-Dave at AdCenter support assures me that this will be corrected in a timely manner.

Trouble is, if you can't get the page with a simple create campaign button to display correctly, what chance is there that the demographics, the anti-click fraud, or the accounting systems work?

[Dinghus]

I had no problems, but then I'm not in UK. I did find it was a bit harder to navigate than AdWords. Not as intuitive for getting things done. I haven't really seen the great flood of customers either.

Even after my stuff is approved it takes a while for the campaigns to show up in search results. One took 3 days.

[bj]

What??? No Blue Screen??? *snicker*

[jammybiskit]

Spookily enough, not long after my post, My-name-is-Dave replied asking me to install the Microsoft Core XML Services and check I have the latest security patches installed. I wonder if he monitors these august pages.

I started down this road but gave up soon when the MS site ordered me to start up all sorts of services that I didn't even know I had, and whistle God Save the Queen backwards. I have been down roads like this before. That way lies madness.

So I have written back to My-name-is-Dave thanking him for his help. But I'll stick to ad providers that I can use with a regular web browser, thank you.

Life is too short.

[bj]

Jammybiskit, you're a very wise soul . . . life is indeed too short.

[blitzen]

Watch your billing! They charged me $200 instead of crediting me $200! I had a coupon for the $200 and used it. The coupon was noted in my account but instead of crediting me $200, I was charged.

Go figure in this electronic age.

[shanferg]

I also went to MSN to try this dazzling new ad campaign and although they did'nt charge me $200.00
I still see far more traffic to my sites due to the fact that I regularly submit articles to here there and everywhere that I can find to do so and I still run my several E-Mail marketing campaigns as well.

[Mastercheddaar]

Yeah I hear ya! I can't stand MS adcenter either. Everytime I get an ad ready it gives me an error message and tells me to wait a while. Plus I can't run it in Firefox either. You need internet explorer. I'm trying to talk my boss out of having me waste ad budget using their service. I don't know, anyone have any success stories with them?

Mastercheddaar

[blitzen]

Watch your billing - they fouled up AGAIN
They charged my credit card for a small amount when my MSN Ad Center account had a negative balance. When I called, they couldn't tell me why and had to research it.
If they can't determine why, how can I?

Think about it - if they did this small amount of unauthorized charges to credit cards to everyone, that's a heck of a lot of money.

I started very slow with them and if I didn't, I probably wouldn't have noticed that small amount.

A few weeks ago I turned off all the campaigns and still got charged for ads after they were off!

Buyer Beware!

[yougottakickalittle]

I started using MSN Adcenter a month ago and have had no real problems, other than they took more than a week to approve a few of my ads while others were approved in under an hour.

I like them since they have a lower opening bid (.05) than some of the others. It gives me an opportunity to drive super cheap traffic to my site. So even if conversion rates are slightly lower, my overall cost of doing business offsets that. In fact, I've noticed no difference in conversion rates, although I have to say that mine are probably higher than the average site because of the niches I target.

My sites are very new and I operate on a very thin profit margin. Without Adcenter, I'm not sure I'd even be turning a profit right now.