I have been in the BETA of this program since March and have not received one impression. I wrote they in April & they told me in a few weeks - nothing.

They have had articles on our area in their Travel section however for some reason my ads do not trigger. I have average placement for these keywords at position #2.

What has changed now?

I have just been reading more on the blog.

This is sure to make for a lot of happy campers:

* Automatic Expansion. At the time of the upgrade, your campaigns will be automatically expanded to include content distribution.
* Key Controls. After the upgrade, you’ll be able to select where your ads distribute (search pages or content pages) and how much you pay per click.

We realize that some of you may not yet be ready for content distribution. If you would like to upgrade without expansion (maintaining search-only distribution) please fill out this online form by August 26, or contact your adCenter representative.

What if I want to give it a try, but some time after August 26 I decide I want to opt out? What then?

Does anyone here do well with any SE content ads?

That is the first thing I turn off

I know a lot of the unaware leave them on accidentally...and wind up paying the same amount per click as their search ads....run up huge bills for negligible results.

What about the savvy types here at WW?

Is there a way to use them that makes sense?

* Automatic Expansion. At the time of the upgrade, your campaigns will be automatically expanded to include content distribution.

Well that won't please a lot of people. For existing accounts you should not have to opt out content ads, they should be opt in only.

Does anyone here do well with any SE content ads?

The first thing I do with new accounts is opt out of the content networks, but as a publisher I do well with them :)

I contacted them 3 days ago and got an email 'we will respond soon'.

Nothing yet.

Does anyone know if this will evolve into an AdSense type program that will be available to small publishers and not just the Microsoft Netowrk?

Gomer, that's what I'm hoping. I've been poking around and I can't find any easy access to MSN's contextual product for publishers. If they have it right now I think it's on a very selective hand picked type basis, or they are using some other means like making deals with large publishers only. I know they have Facebook listed in their content network (the only site they have listed in their content network.)

I got the email. Now I have to go straight to their site and figure out how to opt out. Sigh.

Does anyone know if this will evolve into an AdSense type program that will be available to small publishers and not just the Microsoft Netowrk?

hopefully no small publishers. Nothing personal Gomer

No offense taken powerstar but I do hope they open it up. How they police it and their quality standards are a different matter - they can certainly do better than Google has done with AdSense.

There will be competition for AdSense, this has been an unchallenged cash cow for Google for too long. I am looking forward to it.

wruppert don't waste too much time looking looking for the opt out check box just yet, according to the email it doesn't go live until the 29th of this month.

I got the exact same email today - but I swore I filled out the "opt-out" form about two months ago.

I have no interest in getting their junk content-based traffic.

Adcenter is proving really high maintenance considering how little traffic they generate - I'm about 2 inches from just pulling the plug on them...

"Well that won't please a lot of people. For existing accounts you should not have to opt out content ads, they should be opt in only."

Yep, that's a little sneaky way of doing things. And there will be people that don't get the message/email and login to find their ppc spend higher than normal and you'll see some threads/blog posts on it.

It should be opt in.

ya it's pretty annoying when a company automatically opts you into their newsletter without asking you first after you buy something from their website, and it's much worse when you get opted into something that spends your money without you personally opting yourself in. It's not the kind of thing you would expect a 1st Tier PPC to do (Although we've seen it before with Google and their domain network getting bundled into the search network with no option whatsoever to opt out)

Hi everyone,
If you'd like to opt-out of Content Ads prior to next week's upgrade, please fill out this online form [advertising.microsoft.com] by August 26.

wrgvt, if you decide later on you'd like to opt out, here are the instructions for opt-out at the campaign level:

On the Campaigns tab, select the check boxes next to those campaigns you’d like to edit. Click Bulk Edit. In the Edit settings for multiple campaigns section, from the Campaign settings drop-down list, select Content distribution, and click Apply. Please note that once you have turned off content distribution via Bulk Edit, you will have to manually adjust each ad group if you wish to turn content distribution back on in the future.

I hope this helps to clarify some of your questions.

Thanks!
adCenter411

Content match works very well for some of my campaigns. If you want to find out more you will have to contact me directly for details.

I have been in the BETA of this program since March and have not received one impression.

Then either you weren't doing it right Tropical Island or Microsoft properties don't have any relevence to your subject matter!

I did very nicely thank you very much and I am pretty sure everyone else can do nicely if they start looking at conversions not clicks.

Reminder: U.S. release of Microsoft Content Ads Beta on 8/29 [blogs.msdn.com]

Content ads do really well for me. I trust these content ads more than Adsense as the MSN network has some good content to advertise on.

Will be interesting to see if the content network gets expanded into properties they have been buying ad space on such as digg.com but i'm under the impression they may retail that space differently for the short term and work on migrating it here later