Adcenter - Horrible Customer Service

I finally set up my Adcenter account at the first of the week. The keywords and ads have been approved, the ads show in the #1 or #2 position using the adcenter search - yet there hasn't been a single impression for over 100 keywords.

I have now talked to three different people, all of which have promised to get an answer and call me back by the end of the day. Not one has called back. I've also sent two emails which haven't even been acknowledged. All three reps have said that they see no reason why the ads wouldn't be shown as long as they were searched for. They tell me everything has been set up properly (I use adwords and overture, so I am familiar with the general process).

Has anyone experienced a long delay (like days) in getting their ads to actually run AFTER they have been approved? I have been told by the three reps that the ads go live after they are approved.

All three people I've talked to seem like they don't have a clue about the entire program. They all suggested that maybe my keyword hasn't been searched for.

Me: "So no one has searched for "pets" in the last week?"

Adcenter Rep: It's possible. Did you use our research tool?

Me: Yes, your research tool shows over 50,000 searches last month.

Adcenter Rep: That was last month, it doesn't mean it will be the same this month.

Me: You're joking? You can't possibly tell me that no one has searched for "pets" in the last week? I've searched for those keywords to see if I could find my ad- besides I am running 7 other campaigns with over a hundred common keywords and you want me to believe they haven't been searched for? What about "jewlery", no one has searched for that keyword in the last week?

Adcenter Rep: It's possible. Did you use our research tool?

Me: Yes, I used your research tool. I'm in the #1 position for the keyword.

Adcenter Rep: Maybe you aren't bidding enough for the ad to show?

Me: Must be why I'm in the number #1 position.

Adcenter Rep: You need to be in the top 8 for the ad to show. Let me do some research and I'll call you back by the end of the day.


I realize every company has bad apples, but this is bascially the conversation I've gotten from three different people. They aren't rude, they just don't seem like they know anything about the program. I've asked to speak with a supervisor and they said they don't have any available to take calls... and any company should respond to an email within a 24 or 48 hours.

Ok, it's a pilot program - but it seems they might have rushed the service out without properly training their employees. I've also checked my billing and they haven't charged anything other than the initial $5.


EDIT: I just received an email reply from adCenter Support - not sure if it was a reply to my emails or phone calls. It's a fairly generic email saying they will research the problem and get back to me within 4 hours, so we will see.

 

I'm not surprised - the traffic potential with AdCenter (since AdCenter ads are being served 25% of the time) is miniscule right now. I bid on keywords in AdWords that generate tens of thousands of clicks per day. I copy that ad group in AdCenter (keywords, matching options, ad copy, etc.) and they generate less than 10 clicks per day.

Regarding support...my experiences have been about the same as what you described. I do think they're getting better (even compared to where they were at in November) but at this point would still be willing to wager that experienced PPC marketers using AdCenter know more about the system than they do.

I've seen the same concerns raised in various places and I'm sure (would hope) that the AdCenter team is reading the feedback and beefing up the training process AdCenter reps go through before they throw them in the mix for live calls.

 

Interesting. I actually noticed the opposite. Microsoft called me to ask me what I thought about the service and the representative who talked to me was very responsive.

And I also seem to be getting great CPM.

 

I got the same call. It was a "how are we doing and what can we improve call", not a call to address specific issues or concerns. I was disappointed that the guy who called me apparantly did not know that I ever interacted with support...kind of frustrating repeating everything you've already told the other reps you've spoken with.

What do you mean great CPM? Do you mean low CPC in comparison to other PPC programs?

 

Just got started yesterday with adCenter. It only works in IE, which sucks. It also freezes a lot. I set up two ads, and they have been clicked 5 times in the last 24 hours. Targetted and .05, as compared to $1.00 at Google.

One thing I don't like is how you can't see the top bid. At .05c, it shows me in the 3.25 position for my keyword (one that gets like 40,000 searchs per month)...but as I increase the bid, it shows the postion slowly go up. I got all the way up to $10.00 and it still had the position at 1.26 or something. Betting a dollar more then me didn't improve the amount of clicks by much, just the cost.
Seems odd from my position.

Other then that, it's not that bad. Hopefully a lot of cheap traffic from beta, since not many people are using it.

 

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who has the adCenter freeze up. I actually like some of the features they offer, just wish they would work better - and dissapointed they have chosen not have it work in firefox (which you know is on purpose).

I still never received a response to any of my emails (other than the one that said I would be hearing from them within 4 hours) and no one every returned a phone call. I did manage to get a hold of another person today and they said that a mistake had been made on their side - and that ads should start to run.

I also had some keywords denied for one ad (which were the ones Microsoft suggested) and the rep said that those particular keywords are flagged for manual review and the person who looked at them incorrectly denied them automatically - without reviewing the particular website. If keywords are denied, the ad is automatically denied. They sent me a form to resubmit the keywords - a process similar to Adwords exception request - but it's an Excel form that you need to fill out for EACH keyword. I'm not that good in Excel, so there is probably a way to repeat the same information in 6 columns and 25 rows, but I had to cut and paste various information into a form and submit it - all because they made a mistake. The Adwords process takes about 30 seconds, this took 20 minutes.

adCenter certainly has promise if they can improve their support and work the various bugs out. Right now, the CPC is lower, so that is what matters most. As they get more advertisers, the ad costs are going to go up and at that point they are going to need to have improved to the level of Yahoo or Google if they want to be successful in this venture.

 

I thought Overture support was bad. MSN is even worse. THE worst. My experiences have all been bad with MSN, but I still use it because I still see conversions (although there is much less traffic than I had hoped when I signed on)

 

I would hope that Microsoft, being smart worldly-wise people would ensure their ads show through 'whatever' browser people choose to use. If their ads won't show up in Firefox many publishers may choose alternatives just because of the 'lack of' ads-in-the-space, let alone the obvious revenue implications.

The adult approach would surely be to ensure that a cost center entirely divorce from Microsoft corporate mentalility (only IE is good) expands into every market space available especially Firefox, albeit from a revenue stream generated by ads.

The market place for ads likely will provide far more 'cash' than any individual browser is likely to contribute to the bottom-line these days.

Get aggressive Microsoft, show ads in Firefox, on Mobile-Phones, XBoxes and whatever else you can feed your code to.

 

The ads show fine in Firefox and other browsers. The user interface (where the advertisers log in and create ads) is what only works in IE.

 

this is a reason for me to NOT use the service!!

 

Thanks for clearing that one up...

 

No prob - I thought the same thing when I first signed up.

That's awesome. The less competition the better

 

I'm also having problems communicating with adCenter.

Really strange. . their responses to my inquiries are not quite relevant. It seems like they are letting MSN customer care to handle adCenter questions.

I am a new customer but I have been using adwords and overture for years so I'm familiar with PPC.

????

and no I have not given up on them. . at the end of the day its all about the money.

-jay

 

What I mean is that I seem to be the only advertiser for my keyword (even though its a pretty big one) and they show the ad even if I've already gotten the max number of clicks.

 

Free clicks... surely it can't be...

 

hi everyone,
the reason i'm here is to help all of you, in conjunction with the support team, product team and other adCenter teams, to support what you're trying to do with adCenter. so when i see posts like this, well for one thing it bums me out of course, because i (and all of us here) want you to succeed and enjoy our product. but mainly it means we have work to do to make things better for you.

in cases like this, i will sticky mail folks who report issues on the forums, and then i'll work with our support team to figure out what's going on.

i appreciate your candid feedback, and again the reason i'm here is to make sure your voice is heard. so keep your posts coming. we are listening.

thanks,
adCenter411

 

hi everyone,
i haven't heard back from anybody on this. mjewel - i hope your issues have been resolved. if they haven't, please let me know so i can help follow up with support.

since i don't know the account details for the users here who are having trouble, i'm going to just put a couple ideas out here for possible reasons why you might not seeing your ads.

1. check your budget setup. for example, if you don't have a daily limit set up, it's possible you ran through your monthly budget already, so your ads aren't showing.
2. we are only showing 25% adCenter results. the other 75% is overture. if you are seeing clicks in your account, but you yourself can't see your ads when you search by your keywords, you may be seeing overture results. if you use this link you will see only adCenter results: http://adcenter.search.msn.com/

let me know if that helps.

thanks,
adCenter411

 

We are a large advertiser. When we call our account rep, they don't answer and don't call back. It took us 4-6 weeks to get some ads online because they where ducking our calls and not responding to emails. Due to poor service, we stopped calling. Our account is still live, but it gets no attention and we make no effort to increase our spends.

We'll spend well over a million on Google Adwords this year. Microsoft should do seomthing to get a peice of this action. I am sure there are many other advertisers like me out there.

Oh yeah, and if you find her, please tell my rep to send us some shirts and junk like Google and Kanoodle do

 

Sounds like msn has some serious ground to cover to catch up with the big players.

I would definately not be happy with those results if I were using them. For me for now, Google Adwords will be just fine.

Come on MSN to be taken seriously your going to have to do alot better then that.

Brad

 

Well, my original problem was solved, only to have a similar situation happen on another site. They still have the absolute worst customer support of any company I have ever encountered. The people who you get via phone support seem to know absolutely NOTHING about adcenter or how it works. There have now been five different people who have taken my phone number and promised to call me back - and not a single one has. This is for a very simple problem that literally would take 5 seconds to correct if it didn't have to go through so many corporate channels and departments - each of which seem to have no idea of how they work.

If this was a small start up, I could understand - and even though the program is in beta, it's not like Microsoft doesn't have the financial resources to do proper training.

I did receive a PM from someone on DP who claims to work for adcenter, however, there was no contact information or last name given. I called and spoke with a "Trish" at adcenter and they said they were not aware of anyone with that first name who worked there - which doesn't mean much.

I will say their new reporting feature looks nice - although it still has bugs after the upgrade (help/contact button also doesn't work). There does seem like there is promise in the program as soon as the employees get up to speed. Right now, the delivery on ads, for even competitive keywords is a small fraction of what you would get with google or overture - even with a #1 or #2 position on MSN.