Facts, Fiction and views by valuepitchers

I was one amongst thousands greedily waiting for the release of upgrade of MSN adcenter (5th Aug was the release date). I was so much disappointed that i couldnt dare write anything about it till now. I had to make some changes in an account and my headache started again.

Seriously, the much hyped improvements in the new user interface of adcenter are by no means better. I wanted the date functionality, they gave. But wait - msn's definition of date is US PST or PDT. When they say yesterday, you have to make so many calculations if you are not residing in USA. And, i need to follow the dates according to what MSN gives, if i want custom date range i need to go to the reports section. Then there are 10s of pre built templates and date is a drop down with custom range at the end of the list as if its a step son!

I frankly think MSN is planning to increase jobs from India - yes seriously. My counter parts in US and UK are hiring Indians to give them reporting numbers. They want a report on something on MSN, the best way is to pay some Indians and get the numbers on time, no headache and heart burn to use silly adcenter.

Not just that, you can pass on instructions to the guys in India on what to do with an account, caz anyways one cannot have infinite patience to wade thru 212 pages of keywords and change the bids one by one.

To take a leap from Google, MSN should give out a RULE based bid mangement solution to be given by MSN based on several simple parameters - ctrs, pageviews, conversions, conversion rates and the list goes on. The gaps in optimization that Google left have to be tackled well by MSN. Secretly i keep praying MSN comes out with such stuff and hopefully within few weeks i can see them in Google too, me wins finally:)

Now what, am wondering what happens to any bid management tool that will be built to include MSN. My advice - wait for a year more, till microsoft gets it right or comes out with an API , its a waste of money and resources to tackle the issues and build a bid management tool on msn.

v