This could be a VERY big list. A smaller list would be - what do you like about MSN, however, some of the ones I am listing below, people might have a work around or a way of actually sorting it: - There's nothing like Adwords Editor where you can simply copy and paste, drag and drop keywords/ads etc. - You can't even select an individual date to track stats over time. I 'split test' so need to be able to see at a glance how both ads performed for the say the last 8 days, or the last 15 days. It only gives me a choice for last week, this week, yesterday etc... no date range option - No way of finding out duplicate keywords. How do I find out if widgets is already is in my account twice, but in 2 different ad groups? With Adwords you simply perform a duplicates check in Adwords Editor. - Moving a keyword from one adgroup to another. This seems a ball ache having to add the keyword to the new adgroup and then going back and deleting it from the other. - You can't pause a keyword or ad inside the adgroup. You have to delete it! Stupid. Many a time, advertisers will want to pause an ad/keyword and maybe unpause it at a later date. - No IP address block. You should be able to block an IP address from seeing your ad, like you can on Adwords. What simpler way to prevent click fraud? Any PPC who doesn't supply this IMHO is doing it for 1 reason and 1 reason only - they want to drain your budget quicker. These are some that have come right off the top of my head. I could come up with many more if I was actually logged into my account, but for now it's something to discuss/add to. Any company worth their salt will listen to their customers (us!) so let's see if we can help them out a bit ;-)
You can add to that list one standard import template. At the moment they have two different methods of importing your campaigns. You choose one you miss out on fields that you need which are in the other one. They should combine it all into one.
Also, after messing about with their reports, they only have 'Ad ID' as one of the fields, when it should list the ad title, ad description etc in separate fields (yes, like Google do) ... at the moment I'd have to check each ad by searching for the Ad ID which is a needless task. It looks like MSN have tried to improve on what Google do, but failed miserably. They have left out some of Google's most quality facilities.
you should send them an email with what you have listed and ask them to improve. I agree on the date range and IP blocker. I also would like to add smth to the list. - we should be able to add more than 1024 char negative keywords per campaign. - when choosing between keyword match types, there should be a "check all/uncheck all" button. Imagine if I have 100+ keywords and wanted all of them to be exact matches. - when writing an ad, one should always know the number of characters he has written [like in yahoo], or stop, like it does on adwords when reaching the 35 char limit. If they implement these suggestions, I think adCenter would be just great, having in mind the quality traffic they have.
I've emailed them obvious improvements before. It seems to go in 1 ear and out the other. To think that I'm advising Bill Gates how to improve a part of his company and he's ignoring me ... strange. Some good additions hexinator and I agree with them all. The 'check all' option when selecting match types would be good. It's a pain when I add a load of keywords and have to go and deselect the broad and select them all into exact.
Getting called by them to check 'everything is ok' - ie spend some more cash - still I did have several accounts with the £50 startup bonus
Can't do a bulk import of a campaign (from a CSV file). Funny enough even the template they provided doesn't work! I have a question into them about it; let's see how long they take to respond... _KJH
Hi KJH Concerned you're having issues with the import template. Let us know how you get on and maybe share what our support team suggested as a resolution. Cheers adCenterEU
I was going back and forth with adCenter support via e-mail but it was taking a bit too long between e-mails, so I decided to call in (quick answer, btw) and they're now looking into the problem. It could be an issue with me using OpenOffice and exporting to CSV from there, but even when I view and save the csv file using a text editor, I'm still having issues. Will let you know what I find out... _KJH
Figured it out! Turns out that the file import function in adCenter wasn't working in Firefox. Tried it in IE (7) and it works. Haven't bothered (or need) to try it in any other browsers. Oh, this is on WinXP. No idea about other versions of Windows or Macs or Linux for that matter.