Moving on the part 4 in the Microsoft adExcellence Exam series, we explore the Tracking Ad Performance section. After this, you’re more than half way there!
Microsoft Adcenter Reports (3:22)
This section just explains where to find the reporting features and what kinds of reports where are.
-There are 3 types of reports: Delivery, Budget and Targeting.
-Set basic settings, then do optional advanced settings for additional accounts, columns and layout.
-Create templates and schedule them if desired. Report email is generated and sent to you with a link- which means you need to login to adCenter to review it.
-The report center holds the 20 most recent run.
-“Rich visual charts” and tables are the benefits of these reports for account optimization and effectiveness.
Where is my adCenter Ad? (14:54)
This one is pretty epic in size. It’s basically the video they’d like everyone to watch before calling the 1-800 number for help and goes over several scenarios in which you might not see your ad and what to do if so.
-The process is: ad submitted, ad reviewed, ad approved, ad goes live.
-If the ad is not approved there is an email notice. Be sure to wait a “few hours” after submittal before checking to see if you ad is live or not yet.
Know these reasons on why you might not see your ads:
-quality based ad rank is lower than competitor’s ads
-minimum ad performance threshold isn’t being met
-targeting options not correct
-daily/monthly budget has been reached
-ad group/campaign has passed its end date
-Use the ad preview tool to see ads before they are live.
Then we dive a little deeper on the above reasons for not being able to find your ad.
-Check for impressions- if the “data summary table” on the user interface dashboard is blank, run a delivery report to see if the account/campaign/ad group in question has registered any impressions.
-Improve your quality based ad rank- the basic answer to this one is to increase bids. You can do an update of performance estimates and see if upping the bid will assist with the problem or not.
-Search queries- if you’re bidding on exact, consider changing the match type to increase impressions.
-Targeting- check the time, geography, language first. Bing users are displayed to and grouped by IP address, along with language settings.
-If the account has zero impressions- check that the account status is active and that the credit card is also active. If a credit card is rejected, it is tried 3 times total and then if unsuccessful, goes on credit hold. To undo this, add a different credit card or call adCenter support. This type of incident will show up in the alerts panel on the dashboard.
-Several times through out the video they mentioned to make sure that something isn’t deleted, or set to pause like a credit card, account or keyword list. This must be a common issue.
-Budget pause occurs when your campaign has spent more or is spending more than allowed to stay on track for the monthly budget. To remove a budget pause, increase the budget to 20% more and the campaign with restart. The cycle will begin anew again on the first of the following month with the new budget in place.
-If anything is expired, deleted, paused, disapproved or draft- it won’t show.
Editorial Review (11:30)
Another whopper of a video- but this is one of the few worth the watch. I wish they would actually take out some of the great graphs/charts they have in here and put them in the Help Center.
-If there is an editorial issue as you are creating ads etc; an “inline editorial guidelines” popup box will list out what the issues are.
-There is a rehash of the disapproved notifications, where they are and what is emailed and what isn’t.
-There is a great chart for Table of Editorial Review that has descriptions of editorial issues and solutions to solve them.
-In the user interface, look to the ads and keyword status columns to see feedback and a flyout box to click and see links on how to fix the issue being flagged.
-Items that can fail editorial review pertain to style, grammar, punctuation, misspellings and disallowed characters like – [ ] @ * < = >. The takeaway tip is that if you’re going to bid on misspellings with dynamic text use the param function over the keyword one.
-Know that abbreviations are OK as long as they are common usage.
-Phone numbers are not allowed in title or text unless it’s part of the company name.
-Appealing a disapproval- go to the Help Page in adCenter and click “more help” to get support via email or phone.
-Support can take up to 10 business days.
-If the disapproved goes through the request for exception and is denied twice, the decision is final and cannot be appealed again.
Campaign Analytics (12:18)
Ready to go to Part 5?