Good news for Search Engine Marketers: Microsoft adCenter has made improvements throughout its platform to improve advertiser efficiency. Some of the new adCenter features are:

• Location targeting to mirror that of Google AdWords.
The “market” distribution channel will no longer be available as a targeting option and it will be replaced by “language” and “target location” as individual targeting options. Advertisers will now be able to target users physically located in their target area or who include location keywords within their search query. Location options will include all countries that speak the languages selected, groups of certain countries, a single country, a single state or a territory or a single city.
Microsoft says that roll-out of the new location targeting is in progress in the U.S., U.K. and France and it will be available to all users in a few months.

• Ad description lengths increased to 71 characters.
Previously the maximum character length of text ad descriptions was 70. Earlier this month, Microsoft increased the character limit to make it easier for advertisers to import ads from AdWords to adCenter in order to account for the extra punctuation.

• Mobile device targeting now available.
Advertisers are now able to choose which devices they would like to target for their ads and can create separate campaigns to target desktops and laptops versus mobile devices, allowing advertisers to further optimize their campaigns.

• Browser compatibility with Safari and Chrome and mobile devices.
adCenter released browser compatibility with Safari and Chrome as well as new mobile device support for iPad and other devices. The new release increases the ease of access of the advertising platform from a wider variety of browsers and devices.

All of these new modifications to its advertising platform show that Microsoft is listening to its users and taking the necessary steps to improve its usability.

The benefit of a paid search ad with seller ratings is that they let the searcher know that the advertiser is rated well by their customers. An ad with seller ratings helps customers make more informed decisions when clicking on an ad and purchasing from a company.

A user is more likely to click on an ad with seller reviews versus an ad without reviews. Ads with seller ratings generally earn more clicks than an ad without, thus increasing your click-through-rates.

Ads with seller ratings can be seen on Google.com and Google Search Partners on both desktop browsers and high-end mobile devices that have full Internet browsers.

Below is a screen shot of a paid search ad on Google.com that has 351 seller reviews.

How do you add seller rating extensions? Google looks at customer-submitted ratings (and not product reviews) and matches these reviews to your ad using the display URL of your ad.   The ratings are collected by Google Product Search which collects reviews from third party vendors such as Reseller Ratings, Bizrate, ReviewCentre.com and Viewpoints.

Ads must meet the following criteria to be eligible to appear with seller ratings extensions:

• The campaign must be opted into Google search.

• The user must be searching on Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.de, Google.fr or Google.nl

• You must be an advertiser that provides paid goods or services

• Your business must have at least 30 unique reviews and a rating of four stars or higher on Google Product Search.

Please note that you do not need to have a Google Merchant Center account for your ads to be eligible for seller ratings. In addition, if you have a seller rating of four stars or higher but have bad customer reviews, users will be able to read any bad reviews.

Every day the major search engines keep trying to push the envelope on ways to enhance the performance of your search ads, coming up with information that you could display to engage users.  It’s for this reason that Yahoo and Bing are re-introducing a new and better Rich Ads In Search (RAIS).

RAIS will incorporate richer elements into your search ads, attracting more users and hopefully increasing your click through rate. Such elements will include extra links to different pages on your site, forms, images, and even videos.

With these kinds of elements being displayed within the real state of your ads, there is no doubt that you will be displaying more relevant information, as well as a better user experience. Also, you will be able and engage your target audience right from the search environment.

Below, you can see how RAIS was served for a user who was searching for a poker site. Now he/she has the option to click on the ad or watch a video provided by the advertiser without leaving the search results.

At the moment RAIS is still on a beta stage. Also it is only available for branding campaigns and is displayed just on ads on position #1.