Ha anybody here been excepted to the adCenter Publishers beta (Is it called ContentAds BTW?)? What are your experiences. I'd love to know as I am also looking to joining. Does it compete with AdSense?
Mjewel, could you elaborate on that a little more? What are the nice features and may I ask what your earning?
There are 12 display formats 120 x 240 Vertical banner 120 x 600 Skyscraper 125 x 125 Square button 160 x 600 Wide skyscraper 180 x 150 Rectangle 234 x 60 Half banner 240 x 400 Vertical rectangle 250 x 250 Square pop-up 300 x 250 Medium rectangle 468 x 60 Full banner 728 x 90 Leaderboard 600 x 250 Wide rectangle I'm surprised they don't offer the 336x280 since it is probably the best performing ad block for adsense. The nicest feature imo is that you can customize the text size of the Title, Description & URL. You can independently choose a font size between 9px and 14px. You can also change the display color of the "sponsored link" which doesn't stand out nearly as much as google's or YPN. You cannot place ads on a site until it has been individually approved. It seems they are trying to weed out low quality sites. Approval took about 8 hours (but I only submitted one site, and it was at night). Payouts - It's well known that in general, advertising on MSN is less than Google. With the advertiser paying less, the payouts are bound to be less. So far this is what I have experienced. The payouts are way better than YPN (which is a joke now imo), but less than google (so far, I'm not going to pass final judgment for a week or so). Ad relevance seems to be good, but the depth of advertisers is far less than google. This impacts CTR, which is less than google. The admin is buggy and frequently kicks you out so I haven't spend much time looking at the different reporting features they have. They have an ad rotator that I haven't used which gives you CTR data on different ad block configurations and shows you which one is performing better. "Ad unit rotators are groups of 6 or fewer ad units with different colors, fonts, and other basic design elements. Comparing these ad units and evaluating the differences in performance can reveal performance differentials for different design templates." My initial thoughts are that the MSN program seems promising, the ability to customize ad blocks is better than adsense, they look better, but ultimately it is about CTR and payouts, and those are not yet on par with adsense - but it's a new beta program so hopefully they will improve. It's all about attracting advertisers.
Great post, mjewel. No 336x280. No 250x250 (pop-up only). The two best performing formats of Google (my experience). One might think that making it as easy as possible for Microsoft publishers to switch from Google would be a priority. I guess not. At least, YPN got the 336 and 250 right, from the git-go. Why would M$ ignore these 2 top performers? Difficult to fathom. . .
Interesting thread. I've always wondered, and searched, for if MS Search had a publisher network. I'll keep an eye on this.
I started to serve adcenter ads this morning. It is to early to tell if payout will be better than adsense or ypn. The ads themselves are quality though. I am pretty impressed, much better than YPN.
Is it true that you have to get each site approved, otherwise just switching the adcode to a new site won't show any ads?
I want to know this how can you sign up? I'm from the netherlands, can I sign up? how do they pay by check, paypal etc. that's all, looking for a reply
I have not tried to put my ad code from an approved site on an unapproved site. I would guess that it does not work. It is way to easy to check the referrer before serving the ad code, and I doubt MS would spend so much time manually approving sites just to leave a huge loop hole like that open for publishers.
They pay by check or direct deposit. US only, I think. Search google for the sign up page. Right now you have to sign up and wait to be invited. It took me less than 2 weeks to get an invite.
Does the adcode show up in Frontpage, while you're editing/creating your site? or does it only reveal itself in approved sites?
You're not to put the code on any site that isn't approved, so why would you want to start off by violating the TOS? Bottom line - either you get an account or you don't. If you get approved, it takes only a few seconds to put the code up. If you can't get approved, then it doesn't make a difference.
It took a few hours to get the site approved. It showed ads for a couple minutes before it was approved, but then disappeared for a few hours. Once the site was approved ads were displayed again.