Yes they are a bunch of difficult people to work with. I think they mean well but the system they have to work with is just bad.

I agree this is a flaw in the system. It's very frustrating when I get keywords rejected that have a an excellent CTR--sometimes 20% or more. It makes no sense.

I initially thought I'd just copy over my GAW account which has been performing well. +80% rejection rate. I futzed with it for days, trying to get it set up.

Thousands and thousands of rejections, and each one shoots off its own email. Every day I would have hundreds of new emails from Ad Center. Finally, I gave up and just let it be.

I was contacted by their support team to ask if their specialists could help in the set up. They said that the editorial requirements were much different from other systems, and a few well-placed changes would make all the difference. I was happy to let them. Result, thousands and thousands of new rejections finally ending up where I started, about 20% of my already tested keywords from Google and practically no revenue.

At the IRCE in June, I stopped by the Ad Center booth. I was passed on to their account support specialist from the lead department. Unfortunately, my spend wasn't large enough to gain access to his team but he promised to take a look. He told me the support team I was working with meant well (which I totally concur with) but they didn't really understand the system. He said he'd make some tweaks that should get things moving.

The result, increased performance (nothing stellar, but more keywords active)...for about a week. Then the editorial reviews start going again, and keywords are falling out by the hundred.

I am starting to believe two things:

1. Even within the organization, no one really understands how to drive this bus.

2. The traffic is heavily skewed toward a particular demographic. It is a great source for certain industries, others its not so good. I'm in the second group, so I'm done with it (at least for now). If you're in the first group, you'll just have to constantly battle a broken system to eke out a continuous traffic stream.

I have had dozens of accounts slammed by the "Landing page not relevant" rejection in the last 2 weeks.

Just got off the phone with AdCenter help and the explanation was that if the exact phrase you are bidding on does not show up on the landing page, the automated spider rejects it. You can request an appeal from real human editors, which takes up to 10 days of course.

The suggestion: add a meta keywords tags on the landing page with all the terms you are bidding on. So I guess this is the first time a search engine has told me to keyword stuff the meta tag.

Anyway, might work on pages used for paid search only, but I don't think I'll try it on any core sites right away.

yes very, very, very hard work!

i didnt remember ticking the 'would you like us to send you hundreds of emails when ads are rejected?' box :/

and today i accidentally edited an ad and got all those rejections again! ive just had to close my email program as it keeps popping up with emails.

i'd love to know who decided to design the system in such a way, they are BAD at their job whoever it was.

Oh yes, I just suffered the same fate. Submitted 820 keywords and 722 were rejected due to my dynamic {keyword} insertion violating a style guideline. The reason's given were obviously incorrect and when a human looks at them they "should" get re-instated. The fact that I have to take the time to fill out a support form and appeal the rejection is a complete waste of time.

I added the exact same ads with dynamic keyword insertion to my adwords and YSM accounts with no problems.

I think I am Charlie Brown and MSN is Lucy. (Go ahead, kick the football Charlie Brown) Every couple of months I think, "Gee, this campaign is doing so well on other networks, I should take the time to put it on MSN as well" and something inevitably happens to discourage me from pursuing further msn adverts for at least a couple of months. Christmas is coming, do I even bother? How much hassle? Is it worth it? What could I get done on YSM and Adwords with all the time I would waste dealing with MSN?

MSN Adcenter sucks, plain and simple.

There is money to be made in Search Engine with 2 strong criterias;

1) Distribution Technology - MSN is not bad.
2) Ease of Use - Total Shamble

They dont have to look for super smart people from the Uni or the job market... look read in this freakin forum!

I'm not sure what kind of spending level you need to get to in order to have a dedicated account rep....but I just forward the 10 rejection emails i get every day straight to him. I don't even need to include an explanation any more, because 99.9% of the time, their spider made a ridiculous mistake.

I feel terrible for those of you that don't have this luxury.

Another FYI you may not know...if your site is down, PAUSE YOUR CAMPAIGN. if the spider tries one of your links and can't reach the page, there's a good chance your entire campaign will have to go back through editorial...and sideline you for at least a week.

I too have been facing the same problem with MSN and if called to the support they are replying that the problem is with their alogrithm. So, what can be done to avoid this situation?

Believe it or not. I still getting freaking MSN page irrelevant message and this time is the slap in the face. My bids to my company name were rejected - Landing Page irrelevant.

I really wanna swear at MSN now. You guys are hopeless bunch of wannabes. You suck. Arghh.. I am so mad.

Same problem here. Seemed fine for a while.. now a stream of emails rejecting keywords.. including the site name keyword.