Microsoft adCenter Guide

Microsoft adCenter is the pay-per-click (PPC) program of Bing search engine and from recently, also of Yahoo. The ads are showing on the upper side, right side and on the bottom side of the search page.

One of the first questions you might ask, is why choosing to advertise on adCenter and not on Adwords? Here are some of the reasons:

1. adCenter costumer service is much better than Adwords- From my own personal experience and also by comparing many reviews online, adCenter costumer service is excellent and much better than Adwords.

2. Cheaper prices- Because there is less competition (Google is by far the biggest search engine), the cost for any keywords are significantly lower than the expensive PPC keywords of Adwords.

3. Affiliate links are allowed- While Adwords don’t allow anymore affiliate links, In adCenter its allowed! Actually, almost any successful work from home affiliate marketer is working with adCenter!

4. Bing is growing continuously and holds about 30% of the search engine market share (Including Yahoo) in the US.

5. It’s easy to direct the campaign to specific audience according to the following parameters: Age, geographic location, gender, day of the week and hour.

Guidelines and Instructions

The editors of adCenter check every ad manually and also the landing page before approval. Here are the important ones:

The Ad

Punctuation:
– Capital letter whenever necessary and logical. For example, in a beginning of sentence or when using the company name.
– Using special symbols like trademark and currency are allowed when suitable. Bold or Italic font aren’t allowed.
– You must add a dot/question mark/exclamation mark in the end of a sentence.

Character limitations:
– Title: 25 characters.
– Description: 70 characters
– Display URL: 35 characters.
– Destination URL: 1024 characters (The display URL and the destination URL can be different).

Grammar and spelling:
The editor will reject any ad that isn’t written correctly.

The Landing Page

– Must be relevant to the keywords and also to ad!
– Can’t be “under construction”.
– You can ask for registering from the user if you provide additional information on the page.
– The landing page can’t show anything different from what posted on the ad. For example, if it says on the ad “50% discount” and on the landing page its just 25%…