Is msn AdCenter algo based on fraud?

I started an adcenter campaign a week ago with 100 niche keyphrases at around $3.50/click. No visitors... raised it to $5.50 and didn't move above 12Th position and of course; no visitors... Last night raised it to $18 and very few visitors, most search terms are still at around 6Th-12Th position... all very innocent until you start to look at the following facts:

1- For most of the time, for most of the terms no results show up at the top of the page, just the RH margin...

2- The RH margin has only 5 results as oppose to Google's 8.

So the bottom line is that by not showing results at the top and having only 5 on the RH side they can force advertisers to increase their bids!

MSN couldn't't dream of outsmarting Google in the search engine field, but it sure looks like they figured how to milk advertisers through artificially razing advertiser's expense and increasing their income! How innovative...

raz

i havent used msn adcenter but i am about to start a ppc campaign so its really nice to know this, i will soon post me comments about the service aswell, but so far thanks raz for the information because like this is so new i cant say if investing on it is good or not.

They are not much people talking about msn service yet or a complete analisys of it, thats why we need post like this that explain me/us if this is worthit

As soon as I get some time, I am going to go in there and keep changing the bid amount to see if it will trigger the system to place me at the top of the search as oppose to the RH, that way I'll either prove or disprove my theory...

May be you can try an experiment like that too... Since you havent started the thing, it may be easier for you. If you set it up with just one or two keyphrases to begin with, then experimenting will become simpler.

raz

Yes, i will test it, and see if its worth, i highly doubt it. But even if i am very doubtfull about this i need to test it in order to compare and see if in the future can be worthy.

Adsence seem a little silly if you see it by a SEO guy point of veiw, because get in msn ranking is faster than subscribing to their service. (haha)

I had use overture and adwords in the past so i am not blind in this, thats a plus because i can compare, i highly doubt is better than overture because they display very detail information and suggestions, the truth is that i like the overture PPC system =).

I'm a UK based SEM and personally I am highly unimpressed with msn ad center so far, actually to the point where I am considering abandoning using it.

For a start is the average cpc.... it works out that I am paying over 4x per click what I am with adwords and overture. (as a side note here has anyone else found that they were recommended to set an insanely high base bid??)

In fact with overture, in 1 day last week I got 4 x the number of clicks at nearly half the cost of ad center....

Next is the conversion rate. This is easy enough to sum up... I have seen no appreciable increase in conversions from msn sources since I started the ad center account.

Reporting, I find close to useless. I was really looking forward to seeing this given all the hype and talk, particularly about the research aspect. Personally I find the reporting tools in ad center pretty much useless. It isn't even in the same leauge as the information provided by google analytics....

This brings me to the interface which I find to have a strange feel of not quite being finished yet... I appreciate that the service is relatively new and still in a testing stage, but it just all feels a bit rushed to me.

I suppose it could be argued that to a degree the performance of a campaign on any given chanel is somewhat dependent on the industry using it, can't expect to get the same results everywhere.... however given that I also run advertising on msn via the overture network and get consistently good results, I really can't see this to be the reason for my poorly performing ad center campaign.

All in all and to sum up, you don't have to see the branding to know who built this service....

/rant

Yep, agree. I started running the same campaign that I was talking about on Google, at half the cost I'm in an average 5Th position, compared to msn, 13Th position. I'm sure it's designed to milk the advertiser.

McDonald, is arguably the largest restaurant chain in the world. But we all know that it is not a gourmet restaurant and compared to the garbage it serves it is over priced! Same is true for Microsoft!

raz

I've ran very large campaigns on 30+ ppc's and 3 produced for me. 7Search and Enhance after exhaustive whining and moaning to my reps and lots of CF refunds, and Google currently. But with google it took weeks to get things right. Now I'm #1 on 10,000+ terms at and average of .14-.16 CPC, ave. 22% conversion. Even for general terms like car parts ans used car parts.

But while running another ppc campaign for another company, the results were pathetic. Spending the time to assemble your campaigns according to adword help pages, information in this forum, and lots of hard work, I assure you it will pay off bigtime.

If I had to give one piece of advice it would be, target your keyword in the hyperlink and text within your ads to a specific landing page that mirros them ad content, write 3 different ads, select 'optimize' within your campaign settings, and study your analytics, ctr, cpc, and cpa, and adjust the bids accordingly. Use adwords editor, (its available to everyone now), and use the advanced settings on the new scheduling feature on your google account.

I assure you that in a nutshell, this is the best piece of google adwords advice you will ever find, and someone gave it to me.

That's why they are profitable for everyone but the one spending the money.