Microsoft adCenter Offers Appealing Upgrade

Microsoft upgraded the adCenter user interface early Saturday morning. Within each ad group, the Keywords tab now shows complete statistics and provides editable boxes so the user can change bids on that same screen. In previous versions of adCenter the keyword statistics were presented on one page, and editing happened on a different page. Switching from page to page was clumsy and made campaign management more costly because of the time involved.

“We’d heard a lot of feedback from customers that when it came to modifying keywords they wanted to see performance data with the bidding functionality–and this new integrated page tries to solve for this,” said Natala Menezes, adCenter product manager.

Microsoft has made a variety of other improvements, including better navigation and faster page loads. You can find complete details by reading the Feature Release Guide. Microsoft now uses an Account, Campaign, and Ad Group hierarchy, just like Google AdWords. That makes it much easier to adapt from one platform to the other. Previously Microsoft had objects called “Orders” which confused everybody.

If you haven’t used adCenter recently, take another look. With the improved user interface it may be worthwhile to build or expand your campaigns.

Jonathan Hochman has two computer science degrees from Yale. He runs an Internet marketing consultancy and a web development shop.