Horrible experience with MSN adCenter

Well….I’d like to say that the MSN adCenter has about the most useless support I’ve ever seen……These guys are horrible.

I started using adCenter last week. Created one ad to start and set it to be only shown in Canada.
Problem is that I couldn’t see my ad here in Canada. I had friends from all over the western Canada look and no one could see the ad.

So, I’ve emailed back and forth with support about 6 times, and I get the same canned response every time...from a different person. Basically they tell me they can see my ads at the support center and therefore there is no problem…thanks and bye….

They also tell me to run reports and I’ll see that my ad is being run by seeing the impressions…which I do only to see that the number I get from the reports don’t match the numbers they say they get when they run a report…

This leads me to believe that their geo targeting for ads isn’t working and reporting system has some bugs and major lag time.

Anyways, I thought I’d post here and see if I can get any help, because dealing with MSN support is about as useless as try to poke a hole in water…

 

I agree with you 110%.. i targetted india.. n no1 can see my ads in india.. but it goes everywhere in whole world..
pathetic support pathetic DUMB MSN...

 

hi everyone,
i have followed up with psynaut on his issues with our support team but i wanted to share some targeting info for those of you who are located in countries other than Singapore, France, or the U.S., where adCenter has launched.

you may target any country -- if the end user navigates to the U.S. search site. For example, the end-user is in Canada. Instead of searching on http://search.sympatico.msn.ca/, the Canadian end user navigates to http://search.msn.com/ (the U.S. MSN Search site). The end-user will then be able to see the ad. if the end-user searches on http://search.sympatico.msn.ca/, they will see Overture ads in the results since adCenter has not launched in Canada.

some other things to take into consideration if you can't see your ad but you're seeing impressions and clicks in your reports:
1. rotations - your ad doesn't show every time, we space it out during the day depending on your daily budget
2. budget - your ads will stop running once you hit your max budget.
3. ad performance - adCenter has different thresholds based on CTR, bid amount, and some other factors to help us measure the relevance and value of an ad. this performance is measured against other ads competing for the same keyword, so as more advertisers compete, probability of an ad being displayed may be reduced.

hope this helps -
thanks!
adCenter411

 

I found the FAQs to not have any information. I ended up finding the phone number on the Web (after much research) and got help to some of my questions. The direct adCenter line is 1-800-966-7361. I know this works for the U.S. and probably for Canada as well.

 

Heh, I couldnt even log-in with my Firefox browser and even with IE it was a bit buggy.

 

Yup. I too got irritated when I tried signing up. The message I got was that the "Browser not supported. Adcenter needs IE 6+."

What a way to popularize IE? Ultimately I was forced to sign-up & use their system with IE. Not yet sure of how the performance is going to be.

Should wait & see.

 

Do you still have to pay $5 to sign up? and when will it be lauched in the UK?

 

I signed up for the UK service today - there's a £5 charge.

 

I thought the MSN UK search ads were still powered by Yahoo/Overture?

 

This is somewhat typical of Microsoft - just ask any Mac user. As Firefox continues to gain popularity, I think Microsoft will eventually have to open its doors - and with Google backing it, it can't help but gain popularity.

Sam

 

i have had a hard time with adcenter but i could say the same with anything, i just remain positive that they will get r together soon enough

 

That's a good question - I'm not sure what engine is currently powering MSN Adcenter UK - does anyone know ?

 

i wonder for what people use MSN adcenter...is there any need for that even when you can get organic listings easily....

 

Its Yahoo Search Marketing, formerly known as Overture.

 

fro0ty - yes, it does cost $5 to sign up in the US.

 

and it is 10 Singapore dollars when I did from Singapore. That probably went down the drain. Will have to see the performance of their ads.

 

When i contacted support about firefox, they said that it was going to be worked on so that it became supported, and the estimated time for that to launch was at the end of september.

I also found that the FAQ's were a little dry, I have found that the "help" topics in adCenter on the upper right hand side are much more useful when trying to find certain peices of information.