Microsoft has announced an upgrade to adCenter that the company says will give advertisers "more control over targeting, bidding, and distribution of your advertising campaigns." Microsoft wrote several blog posts to explain all the changes: Campaign Management Updates covers the new targeting options, new bidding flexibility, and improved keyword research tools Account Management Updates covers sign-in changes, the new home page and alerts, and a new settings page adCenter Desktop (Beta) Updates covers improved performance and functionality in the adCenter Desktop beta Content Ads [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: adCenter Content Ads

ClickZ reports Digg has dropped Microsoft as the exclusive ad provider for the site. Microsoft ads started appearing on Digg in October 2007 after Digg and Microsoft made the deal in July. Prior, Digg used Google AdSense ads to monetize the site. Then Digg dropped Google for Microsoft ads and now, it appears Digg will sell ads directly, and continue to use Microsoft ads for open inventory. The Digg/Microsoft partnership was suppose to last until the summer 2010. Bring the ad management in house will allow Digg to explore more revenue models and create custom ads, that are outside of t [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter Content Ads | Microsoft: Partnerships | Search Engines: Digg

The Microsoft adCenter blog has an army of posts containing details of their large fall upgrade. The main features most advertisers may notice are: Campaign Management: ability to pause and resume ads and keywords, geo-targeting enhancements, and improved performance reporting on the Ads page Editorial Improvements: faster reviews, dynamic feedback about why ads and keywords were disapproved, and inline notification when dynamic text causes your ads to exceed character limits User Management: if previously you were only able to have one user, now you can create multiple account users [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: adCenter Content Ads

Extending a partnership that dates back to 2006, Facebook today added Microsoft's Live Search to its offerings, giving users in the U.S. a way to search the web without leaving Facebook.com. An announcement on the Live Search Blog also says Microsoft adCenter will display paid search ads next to those web search results. Microsoft has been providing ads on Facebook since August, 2006. The initial implementation of Live Search is understated, to say the least. The Facebook search box gives no immediate indication of its new capabilities: It's not until you begin typing in the search b [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter Content Ads | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Partnerships | Top News

TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is testing their self-service AdSense/YPN product named Content Ads. The truth is, as TechCrunch said in an update to his post, they have started this pilot earlier this year. I have a post at the Search Engine Roundtable linking to the pilot enrollment form. Content Ads is still a very exclusive and limited beta test. Google AdSense is widely used by publishers. Yahoo's Publisher Network follows but is still also in beta and is only accepting US publishers (even after three years in beta), while Microsoft's Content Ads has been accepting on a very limited [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter Content Ads