Last month, Microsoft adCenter announced that it was planning to release a new ad rotation option and the new setting is now live within the advertising platform.
Advertisers now have the option of two different rotation settings — the first option is to show your ads that receive the most clicks most frequently, while the second option is to have your ads rotate evenly, regardless of the number of clicks the ads received. In the past, Microsoft adCenter only had one setting to rotate all ads evenly.
When an advertiser chooses to rotate their ads more evenly, they will have the option to test different ad headlines, description text and vanity URLs to see what performs best according to their metrics and campaign goals. Using the ad rotation option to optimize for clicks allows advertisers to have the search engine automatically show the better performing ad, based on the click-through rate metric, but may not always be in line with other goals such as conversions or even cost-per-acquisition.
To update your ad rotation settings in Microsoft adCenter, in the Settings tab of your ad group, go to Advanced Settings and you will see the new ad rotation option. The default setting is to optimize for clicks.
Microsoft adCenter continues to release new updates to make its advertising platform easier to use for search engine marketers. The MSN/Yahoo platform recently announced that its interface has been updated to enable advertisers to change or add agencies without losing their account history. In the past, advertisers on adCenter were unable to transfer accounts from one agency to another, similar to Google AdWords, and agencies had to start from scratch by creating new accounts for each advertiser.
Microsoft Advertising is calling this new feature Agency Enablement and says that it will now make it possible for agencies to link or unlink client accounts, eliminating the need to create new users or accounts when a new agency starts to manage a new client with an existing adCenter account. Doing so will keep campaign history to better improve optimization as well as maintain account history and performance on hand. In addition, Microsoft says that this will give more control and flexibility over billing preferences with the ability to easily edit the bill-to option so that agencies can manage client invoices.
The network says that in order to use this new feature, you must be using adCenter’s new agency management model. To do so, some agencies may need to upgrade and unlink from current clients’ accounts and re-link by sending your clients invitations to connect.
Microsoft adCenter has been working tirelessly to release updates for its advertising platform in order to increase usability throughout its interface as well as stay on the same playing field as Google AdWords.
Last month Google transitioned its Merchant program to Google Shopping and encouraged advertisers to create Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns. Now some users are starting to see ad links on Bing.com that look similar and have the same format of Product Listing Ads. The PLA ads on Bing include a small square image, headline, along with a company name and price of the product and have been shown on the top right hand side of the search engine results page (SERP).
In addition, Bing has added seller review extensions to its paid search ads. Seller reviews are an easy way for searchers to see which ads are from merchants with customer feedback and ratings. What’s more, the seller reviews have an additional line for the paid ad and stand out with yellow stars.
Below is a screen shot with a paid search ad on Bing.com with seller reviews.