Microsoft just announced that Yahoo! Bing Network is the new name for Microsoft adCenter. The search engine says the new name reflects the commitment of both Microsoft and Yahoo to bring advertisers a broad, high-value, and engaged audience that helps them grow their business.
The advertising platform for Bing Ads is the same as it was for adCenter, but it looks like the log-in page is more in line with the Bing search page with a large, landscape image as the background. The new name of the advertising platform is much more of a rebranding effort rather than changes to the important features of the network. The desktop tool, now called the Bing Ads Editor, has also received a face-lift, but the functionality of the adCenter desktop tool and online interface remain the same.
Microsoft has been hard at work to bring its advertising platform up to par to its Google counterpart. It recently released new features like ad rotation capabilities, URL by match type functionality and other elements to increase the usability of the platform for advertisers. What’s more, it was recently announced that Bing will be the default search engine of the Kindle Fire, which will most likely increase the search market share of the network while decreasing Google’s share.
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.
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