Tag Archives: adcenter

Unlock new customers?

Microsoft Adcenter helpfully sent me a link to lists of low cost keywords I could advertise on, categorised by sector, to “unlock new customers”. I had a quick look through the ‘sport and rec’ list. Here is a small sample (click to enlarge):

There are lots more where they came from. Microsoft say:

These keywords are actual terms recently used by your customers on Live and MSN Search Engines and are available at a low cost while very few other advertisers are bidding on them.

No kidding.

Did they do any QA on this list[1]? Exactly how many people are searching on “vn b m gn mbnmncbm xbc bcv 0 vfkmjirhtfnkj nb b x bmnx bv”? What has dogging (not work safe) or Hare Krishna got to do with rugby? Is it any wonder nobody is bidding on “duck porn”? Are there really that many people interested in pictures of nude female bodybuilders (apparently)?

Thanks Microsoft, but I’m really not sure they are the sort of new customers I want to unlock.

[1]There are some pretty unpleasant ones I didn’t include.

Microsoft adCenter over reporting conversions

I have long suspected that Microsoft adCenter is over reporting conversions. Here is the confirmation from my adCenter reporting:

I am guessing that the purchaser visited the ‘thank you for your purchase’ page (which contains the conversion tracking script) 5 times, for whatever reason. I can’t think of any other way this situation could occur – the conversion tracking isn’t set up to take account of multiple purchases in one transaction. How difficult would it be to only count the first visit? Google can do it.

Being cynical, perhaps the over reporting suits Microsoft? But it makes it much more difficult for me to assess the real effectiveness of keywords and ads. Another good reason to concentrate my efforts on Google Adwords instead.