We are having trouble with adcenter at the moment, for keywords that we are supposed t o be shown for we either are not there at all or appear infrequently.

So far no useful help from the support staff, hopefully soon!

Same here for both UK and US adcenter

Same average CPC, same position but lots less impressions and clicks?

What are these guys up to?

Terribly low impressions and clicks since Dec. 1 here too. Something has changed dramatically.

Recently, MSN stopped showing up altogether in my regular search results. Something has changed dramatically. It had been an excellent source of traffic.

Down massively - gonna call them on Monday and see. Affecting UK and US. Either a mistake or they don't want our money!

oh wow, so it's not just my account.

just eyeballing i can say that my imps has decreased by more than %50.

i hope if it's a permanent algo change MSN woud say so.

if its a glitch, i have my theories:

1. datacenter failure
2. the app code is mistaking 'spend until depleted' for smooth over the month.
3. somebody screwed up the regular expression matching :)

Called them now. Help center response was poor, "maybe because you are on page 2" etc etc.

I'm sure they would have discussed an algo change and warned their staff. The thing is the guy knew of no changes, our traffic is 20% of what it was. Major difference. Will expect some feedback tomorrow.

Update:

Got a call back, acknowledgement that there is something wrong by the helpdesk manager, but he asked for 48 hours to come back with more detail. I'm hoping for feedback in less via this board / msn blog and I'll then be calling the poor guy to give him an update!

ive seen some better results having looked just now, hopefully they have done something!

after 3 very low days, my traffic looks normal again.

Hi everyone,
As many of you noticed, we experienced lower than normal traffic over the weekend, from Thurs. Nov 30 through Sun. Dec. 3, due to an issue on adCenter's back-end. You should be seeing normal traffic levels again as of Sunday morning PST.

I'm sorry about this inconvenience.
Thanks,
adCenter411

Erm, that's quite a worrying statement as over here in the UK my impressions and ad serving problems started Sunday morning PST (afternoon GMT).

Since then I have been at 40% of normal delivery and clicks are down accordingly - and still like this.

It seems to me whatever you fixed from Dec 1 & 2 you have impacted the UK (for me at least) at the same time.

You havent let the Vista team near the code have you?!

But seriously Jim - please, please fix it for me to have my ads run all the time.

[edited by: Swanson at 9:42 pm (utc) on Dec. 5, 2006]

the reason for this was posted a couple of days ago ( fire in a DC? ) does no one read the boards nowadays prior to posting

I think that's why people stopped posting a few days ago?

I was replying to the message from adCenter411 that it should all be fixed as of Sunday PST - which is very worrying when that is the time it has since gone pearshaped for me and still is.

So the theme of my post is - well no I didn't see any problem on 1 & 2 of Dec, my problem started at the time it was "fixed".

I have seen from other boards around that in the UK that also has been the case as well so it isn't just me.

[edited by: Swanson at 9:54 pm (utc) on Dec. 5, 2006]

Adcenter411

I'd appreciate you addressing the issues I raised in this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

which was the first dealing with this subject.

Your response on this should have happened about 4-5 days sooner AND been provided to your phone support staff.

Today is Tuesday, this issue first came up last Thursday evening, This lack of communication and secrecy whether here or with your phone support is a major problem.

Why did it take you or anyone from adcenter support (and the answers had to be grilled out of them) several days to even publically acknowledge the problem?

You have a good product, and one that can deliver good ROI for the advertiser, but don't leave your advertisers hanging with half or non answers from your support staff. When something like this happens why are you (and I don't mean you personally) and every other search company afraid to admit it till long after it's resolved? You can separate yourself from the others by being a lot more upfront when issues arise, instead of always having to be cryptic. People do appreciate honesty.

[edited by: Shadoze at 11:00 pm (utc) on Dec. 5, 2006]

You can separate yourself from the others by being a lot more upfront when issues arise, instead of always having to be cryptic

I'm with Shadoze

The fact is that MSN knew there was a problem. All someone had to do was place a message on the account panel giving notice of this with a status message. Instead they did nothing. Emails flew around where the apologised to people individually, but never officially. It's a disgrace that a company like Microsoft can let this happen. It's quite amazing that this didn't make headline news. Whoever is in charge of MSN Adcenter at this time should feel ashamed of themselves. My 10 year old nephew knows how to handle situtaions better.

I have personally seen emails from MSN staff talking about the problem, and here we have it posted on a board. What about those that didn't have time to scan the boards?

The posting by MSN was not even that aapologetic either. I mean if I had customers that had committed budgets, then I would personally, at very least apologise, and say what I would do in the event of it happening again. I'm not even after credit, but a sincere apology would do, and something to say that they will keep us better informed next time there is an issue.

The help desk must have known something about it, but no chance of them coming forward and holding their hands in the air, nada.

Amazing.