FINALLY, the last installment of the MSN AdCenter Exam series- having to do with the adCenter Desktop Editor. It’s been a long haul, but from what I understand there are some of you out there that got some value out of the series. So I thank you for staying tuned and staying with me. I’ll link out to the entire series in a separate post as well as linking them all up to each other.

Just so you know- not a single question came up (for me anyway) on the exam regarding this section. If you’re looking to save yourself 40mins, this is a good place to do it. (It is listed as Beta after all.) If you don’t know how to use the Desktop tool- this is a good resource to view.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop Overview (5:11)

This section shows you how to install and navigate the user interface and what it is, why you would want it.

Find the link for the download under the Tools tab in your adCenter account, click on it, download, run and follow the installation wizard.

Open the account from your desktop, sign in with your adCenter login (click remember me- so you don’t have to keep logging in) and off you go.

The tutorial then goes through all the items on the “Task based ribbon” summarizing what the Home, Manage and Research tabs can do.

The “Quick Access Toolbar” cuts the icons off in the screenshot tutorial but you can make a best guess and utilize it to switch users, import/export and access resources.

The Browser Pane shows you your accounts. Select one account at a time and click on folders to expand and click an item to have it show up in the Manager pane.

The Manager Pane is the main window/workspace

To filter- select View and choose from the drop down list. This is also where you can do multiple changes or advanced copy and paste.

The Editor Pane is the pane below Manager where you can change details like budget, targeting, exclusions, dates, bids, find/replace feature.

The Dashboard- on the far right sidebar – is where you can save your “favorite campaigns and ad groups.” I barely looked at this.

Account Basics (8:17)

Skip the first 4 slides, it’s just a rehash of what it is and what the “learning objectives” will be.

Subscribing to account shows you how to add accounts and to “sync” them (as few or as a many at a time) so that your Editor uploads the newest information from your adCenter account. Watch for the size of data expected to be uploaded…

Sync up whatever account it is you’re going to be working first…then work on it, then sync again.

The conflicts view will show you only items with conflicts, i.e. data from the web UI not matching up with the desktop editor. Click on the conflict in question and adCenter will ask you which version of the data to keep- select and apply changes.

The tutorial then goes through all the different symbols and what the different fonts and colors means. For example a strikethrough is something that is deleted, same with the black “X” mark. Look for green plus signs, black X, red X, italics and bold fonts.

Notifications Stacks are shown when the manager pane is set to All- and will prevent you from syncing all changes and needs to be remedied. Basically it’s a list of errors you have to address in order to move on.

Exporting and Importing (6:22)

Specifically how to import and export Google AdWords files to adCenter Desktop.

The acceptable file formats are CSV, Tab delimited and Excel Workbooks.

Export AdCenter data by right clicking the item to be exported and click “Export” along with where to save the file.

Export Google AdWords data and save as a CSV- edit in Excel.
What you really need to know:

Setting default values for your adCenter account- go to the big red Desktop button and click Desktop Options- Advanced- under Campaigns/Ad Groups etc; set the default options you want applied when importing. THIS will save you a lot of time if you are importing multiple campaigns/adgroups.

Importing Campaigns
Click Import- use the Import Wizard, select the source from where the file will come. Google, Yahoo, AdCenter or Excel spreadsheet.

Once the file is uploaded, select the appropriate columns above the imported data.

Account Management Top Tips (7:05)

First up, 3 slides of introduction that you should skip.

1st tip- Copy and Paste. Like campaigns, right click, copy and paste into the account where you want them to go. Everything is copied- and applies to ad groups, ads, keywords etc;

2nd tip- Multiple Changes wizard- example of creating and editing keyword list, highlight keywords, click copy to Excel, make changes in Excel, copy the keyword data, open the wizard and select the ad group destination. Paste the data into the wizard.

When you paste, it’ll grab the headers from Excel as well, see “The first row contains column headings” box.

3rd tip- Find and Replace. Click the Replace button, change the word you want to change in Find and then replacement text. Be sure to select what ads etc; you want to perform this on so that it’s in the Manager pane so the Find/Replace can work it’s magic.

4th tip- Opt into Match Types- adding match types to your current keyword list, select the keywords, right click and select which match type to add for those keywords.

5th tip- Advanced Search and Filter- Click “Advanced” and chose from the drop down menu that you want to filter by (so match type for example) select filter (like exact or contains) and then you can add an “Add Criteria” if needed to add additional filters.

Desktop Customization (4:50)

How to set default values (which we already went over), date ranges, defaults and columns.

Default values- set through the red AdCenter Desktop Button- as we went over Exporting & Importing but with more screenshots.

Default keyword bids- at the ad group level- basically the max CPC for the ad group. They’re just calling it something else.

Manager columns- arrange which columns show. Click Columns in the Manager pane and select what columns you want.

Custom date ranges- Click the date range button and select Custom (the last custom date range you ran is held here until you run another). Unfortunately it’s still limited to a max of 31 consecutive days, no more than 2 years in the past. Click download statistics.

Desktop Campaign Optimization (9:04)

I see the light at the end of this tunnel….last one.

Research tab- Group of keyword tools to expand: similar, extracted, frequent and category. Demographic tools for traffic, age and gender. And the keyword bids estimation tool.

Keyword Generation Tools- select a group or ad group of keywords and start clicking tools depending on what you’re after:
Similar Keywords- displays a list of terms similar to a word or phrase you enter.

Extracted Keywords- displays a list of keywords from a webpage URL you enter.

Frequent Keywords- displays a list of terms that were most frequently used in search queries during the previous month.

Category Keywords- displays a list of terms associated with a business category you select.

Tutorial then walks through using the similar keywords tool. It’s pretty self explanatory- but does provide impression data as well, select and add to ad group. It is nice that you can select WHERE from a drop down menu of where the terms will go, ad group, ad group or campaign negatives.

Flip around keyword generation tools from the drop down menu while conducting all your research.

It then continues on to each kind and how to use the generation tool. If you’ve used this before at all – skip this part.

Keyword Intelligence Tools
Monthly Traffic- display the number of times each keyword was used as a search term for the previous three months.

Age Demographic- displays the percentage of total searches on each keyword made by people in six age ranges.

Gender Demographic- displays the percentage of searches on keywords made by males and females. (And people of unreported gender.)

Keyword Bid Estimation Tool
Select one or more keywords in the manager pane, click the estimation tool button, see positions 1-3 with the corresponding bid to attain that position.

Bulk Targeting
Select multiple campaigns in the manager pane, click “targeting” in the editing pane and go to town on the edits you want to make.(They also show how to apply incremental bidding as well). Click OK.

Copying Targeting
Select campaign you want to copy, right click, copy and select campaign that you want copy targeting for. Right click, paste special. In the paste settings box check the radio button for what you want to paste.

THE END. This means you are now ready to take the MSN AdExcellence exam!