Forum Moderators: werty
That most popular term had the most impressions by far, and my ad had a > 20% CTR on that term.
Many of my other keyword terms had no impressions. One term had a few impressions and no clicks, but several of the other keywords had no impressions at all.
I noticed that my ads were not appearing anymore and I couldn't understand why. When I logged in to Adcenter it said the keywords and ads were all approved so it didn't make any sense.
I called Adcenter phone support a few minutes ago - and it was great to talk to a live person so quickly, by the way - but the answer I got doesn't make any sense and what they are doing seems to be shooting themselves in the foot.
The rep said that since one of my keywords had many impressions and clicks but the other keywords had few impressions and no clicks that those other keywords were bringing down the overall ranking of my campaign and that it had dropped position and now been dropped. He said that the system determined that the other keywords (even the ones that no one typed in) were not relevant to the ad and that it booted my campaign because of it, although there was no indication on the web site that this had happened.
This doesn't make any sense. Even with the low CTR keywords, my campaign had an overall CTR of > 11%.
I asked if that meant I would be penalized for bidding on a list of keyword misspellings and he told me that I would be penalized for doing such a thing.
I have deleted the campaign (it wasn't running anyway) and resubmitted it with just the one keyword so we'll see what happens..
Has anyone had this happen to them? The only way around it that I can think of is to move the low traffic keywords into their own order or campaign (i.e. an order or campaign with just keyword misspellings)..
The MSN rep said they had a 3-hour turnaround time and he was right - my new campaign and its one keyword was approved in about 2.5 hours. I'd like more instant gratification but I'll have to deal.
The neat thing I am liking about MSN is that you can have your clicks go right to an affiliate offer page and so you don't have to make a landing page if you don't want to. (I'm lazy and I have some Adcenter credit that expires in a few weeks so I needed to get off my butt and do something ASAP.)
Also, the fact that I was able to talk to a real live person was nice. But I didn't really like what he had to say. One of my keywords had 45 ad impressions and he said that was "a lot".
I think they are a little too caught up in trying to be relevant and not spending enough time trying to make their web site work well. I have not been able to edit any ads and just end up having to add a new one but their interface is so screwed up that I can only add one new ad at a time and then have to click back and through the orders menu again in order to add another one. What should take me five minutes ends up taking a half hour, which gets frustrating.
My ads are now running again but my CPC has gone up and now I am paying more per click and getting a lower position. My CPC is about 33 cents for #2 spot whereas it was under 27 cents before and I was in the #1 spot.
Their pricing estimator tool says to reach the #1 spot I must pay $1.10 per click. Just for the heck of it, I raised my max bid to $1.50 per click but for some reason it is still leaving me in the #2 spot and charging me 33 cents per click.
[edited by: Scotia_King at 4:25 pm (utc) on Jan. 9, 2007]
But I entered several more ad creatives 5+ hours ago and they still have not been approved. And now I see that the adcenter site is down for maintenance..
As far as getting to the #1 spot.. Although I have bid $1.50 per click the algorithm will not let me get above the #2 spot where I am paying an average of 26 cents per click.
I submitted a support ticket about it and was told to re-submit the campaign AGAIN, which I am not keen to do right now, especially since the only conceivable reason I think that would have caused this to happen is that one of my three ad creatives got no clicks in a 24 hour period (and so I deleted it). But is that worth the penalty of having to kill your campaign and re-submit it?
