First, let’s cover the data that you can keep uniform between AdWords and AdCenter:

• Campaign Structure
• General Campaign Settings (geo-targeting, negative keywords, etc.)
• Ad Text
• Keyword Lists

Campaign data can easily be imported into AdCenter from AdWords through the AdCenter user interface. In AdCenter, go to the Tools menu in the top nav, and then click on the link to import your campaign:

From there, you can download an import template to copy and paste your Google campaign data. This tool can only be used initially; once your account is setup in AdCenter you can’t use it to upload changes without overwriting your account, which would erase all historical data. To upload changes to your existing account, you’ll need to use AdCenter’s desktop editor, though this is currently not available for Mac users.

If you are able to access AdCenter Desktop editor, you can simply mirror changes to ad text and keyword lists (additions, status) by uploading the same reports into AdWords and AdCenter. Just be aware that AdCenter uses slightly different column headings for this data, so be sure to edit your column titles before uploading into AdCenter. If you upload data into AdCenter with an incorrect title AdCenter will show you an error, but doesn’t always specify that your data had a wrong identifier. I have spent hours trying to debug upload issues, only to realize my campaigns were labeled “campaign name” instead of just “campaign.” So, double check these initially and you’ll save yourself a lot of time troubleshooting.

Negative keyword lists can easily be copied from Google to MSN. If you have the desktop editor, you can upload them this way, but if not, I haven’t found it too cumbersome to copy and paste my negative lists into the AdCenter UI since you can do so on the campaign level.

As for more granular account changes, like bid changes, I honestly can’t recommend a work-around for doing them on a per-platform basis. Your keywords/products will inevitably perform differently in each search engine, so you’ll need to monitor and change these separately in Google and Bing. And the same is true for your ad performance. If you’re adding new ad text it’s fine to upload the same new ads to both platforms, but in terms of monitoring performance you’ll have to do this per search engine. Like keywords, your ads will perform differently in each search engine.

Some other things to consider are keyword match type. Keep in mind that when you’re implementing your Google keyword lists in Bing that Bing won’t let you manage your keyword match types individually, i.e. you can’t pause only the broad match type of a keyword, Bing will force you to pause broad, phrase and exact for that keyword. If you’re finding that one match type does much better or worse in Bing, then you’ll want to rethink your campaign structure to segment keywords by match type in separate campaigns.

I hope these tips help you streamline managing both an AdWords and AdCenter account simultaneously. Feel free to share any tips of your own in the comments section below!

Last week on Whaddya’know Wednesdays, Sarah Stup showed us three tips in managing an MSN adCenter Account.

Whadday’know Wednesdays 11: 3 Tips For Managing MSN adCenter Accounts

Two weeks ago on Whaddya’know Wednesdays, Chris McGee gave us some excellent e-commerce PPC landing page goals.

Whaddya’know Wednesdays 10: The Top 5 Goals for E-Commerce PPC Landing Pages

Three weeks ago on Whaddya’know Wednesdays, Abby Woodcock showed you how to use MSN’s implicit and explicit bidding strategy.

Whaddya’know Wednesdays 9: How to Use adCenter’s Implicit and Explicit Bidding Strategy

A month ago on Whaddya’know Wednesdays, Bethany Bey told you all about the best way to utilize negatives.

Whaddya’know Wednesdays: 8 Tips to Enhance Your Negative Keyword Strategy

For even more videos, check out PPC Hero’s Video Blog Category!

Example of new headline

Now, there are several implications from this move, as well as some technical information that needs to be shared, but in general, this seems like a rather dramatic change. To follow, there will be a brief description of what exactly Google is doing to our ads, followed by some strategies to consider using to better utilize this change for good.

To start, as you can see, the display URL has clearly been moved to the headline. If you can’t see it, get really close to the screen…just kidding. It is separated by a line, and still appears un-capitalized. So, in appearance alone, the display URL is practically the same, but just listed as the domain of the URL. Also, since this only affects top position ads, the other ads will remain the same. This is not to be confused with the recent addition of putting the first description line with the headline, and in fact this can still affect ads that are made to have the first two lines together. The display URL will still appear next to the combined description/headline, as long as it is under 68 characters in total. So, for those of you wondering about the title, the line “Domain URL Now Makes Some Ads Have the Longest Headlines Ever,” only contains 61 characters. Your headline could potentially be seven characters longer than that epic poem of a blog title. Homer’s Odyssey has nothing on that!

Thanks, Google, for showing me "Homers Odyssey."

So why is this important? First off, to state the obvious, your headline will stick out to a potential customer. Applying the same logic as the original expanded headlines, Google states that this expanded headline with the domain of the display URL will continue to boost CTR. This is because people will click on your ad more if they trust the display URL. And, if you have compelling combined headline text, it will clearly lead the reader to your display URL. Which brings me to my first, and somewhat obvious strategy—make sure the domain of your display URL looks trustworthy. This is easier said than done, as it may be difficult to get it changed quickly. But, just be sure that if you don’t feel confident in your display URL, don’t bid for top position! This may actually hurt your numbers, especially if your URL looks shady.

Also, another strategy to consider is brand consciousness. This goes hand in hand with the last paragraph—if your domain URL is a well-known brand in your industry or to your target audience, this will certainly help you. If your brand is not well-known, avoid the top position! Get some brand recognition with a more conventional advertising approach, and once you have gotten enough traffic, then consider utilizing the top position. Now, this is not an exact science—there is no magic number that shows that people know your brand. It is the advertiser’s call in the end, so make sure you think over the impact of your brand name before utilizing this new strategy.

The final strategy to consider is how to utilize this new innovation with the already combined headline.  As mentioned in this previous post, both the headline and the first description line have to be able to stand alone, meaning that you can’t count on Google combining one giant compound sentence. Make sure both the headline and the description line still make sense as individual lines, otherwise Google won’t combine them and your potential customers will just be confused. So, with this in mind,  there are a few things you can do to maximize this new headline. First, you don’t have to mention your brand name in the ad if it is your domain URL. This saves you some characters in these lines. This is especially true if you use pronouns, like “Here” and “We,” as these are more likely than not shorter than your brand name. This paired with the domain URL right next to the text can both save you some characters in your description/headlines, but also can facilitate brand awareness.

So, to conclude, this new change may make your headlines 68 characters long, which is a leg up on being noticed instead of your competition. But, if you do not have a suitable display URL, it may hinder your CTR. So it is important to be aware of your brand, and how noticeable it is to a consumer. And finally, it is important to keep in mind that this won’t help to make your headline, description line, and display URL read as one continuous sentence—Google doesn’t allow that. SO keep these strategies in mind, and be sure to be aware of the changes that Google is making to your top position ads.

Google Voice is Google’s way of helping you to consolidate your phone numbers. As shown in the basic introductory video supplied here, Google Voice takes all of your telephone devices, and allows you to assign one phone number that connects to all, some, or none of them. Google Voice gives you many personalization options, such as the ability to choose a custom phone number (even ones that spell out your company’s name, for instance), to be able to choose a different area code than the ones attached to your other phones, the ability to block certain people or area codes from calling you, and also allows you to pick a personalized voicemail greeting. Also, Google Voice will take your voicemails and transcribe them to text to be saved in a Gmail-esque inbox online, which makes it easy to sort your messages and access them in an easier interface.  And to top it all off, it works on all the major smart phones as well as an app. Without the addition of Adwords, this is already worth a look from a business standpoint—you can personalize how people contact you, and also remain easily connected to your business lines from anywhere.

So Google Voice is already something you should look into as a business. But much like how Google operates, there is much more planned in the future. Google Voice and Google Adwords have announced that the two applications will be having a merger of sorts. Basically, Google Voice will allow you to track the calls that your ads are generating by adding a phone number to the bottom of each of your ads, and it is going to be called Google Call Metrics. This eliminates the need to hassle your customers with questions about how they found the number, how they heard of your business, etc.  Google plans on doing this by utilizing the ability to reassign your phone numbers to one single Google phone number. So, you can create a phone number that is easy to remember or spells out your name (easier is better for most potential consumers) and assign it to an ad group or campaign. This number will appear either at the top or bottom of your ad text, and won’t count against you in the already hard to appease character count rules. So, when someone sees your ad, they see the number to call as well. This counts as a conversion for your ad, and Google will track multiple statistics about these conversion calls, such as duration, which ad triggered the call, and also how much revenue came from the call. Much more is undoubtedly coming as well.

In addition to this, Google Voice and Adwords are making it easier for mobile devices to access your ads. Google Voice is now available for all major smart phone types, and your ads, which only display phone numbers for laptops and desktops, can be called directly from the phone just by clicking the number in the mobile phone’s browser. This may not seem like an epic innovation, but it does make it easier for the potential customer to contact you, and removing any barriers to a conversion will undoubtedly result in more conversions and more exposure for your client/business.

This combination of Google Voice and Adwords opens up many future possibilities for your advertising campaigns. To start, Google will not be charging for the calls that your ads are generating as they do for clicks. This will change after Call Metric’s wide scale implementation, but for now you can generate much more revenue without much more cost to your campaigns. Also, you can tailor specific phone numbers to your clientele, or to what campaigns are converting the most. Funny or creative phone numbers aside, being able to give your ad’s phone number an area code that either corresponds to a place that gives you great business, or is easy to remember can help more people to call, and can minimize caller mistakes in the dialing process. Also, this area code factor combined with campaign level geotargetting can give you the advertiser much more ability to tailor ads specifically to who you are trying to target. Basically, Google Voice combined with Adwords gives you a whole new level of customization for your ad campaigns.

So to summarize, you will be able to more accurately gauge the impact that your Adwords campaign has outside of online sales. You will be able to track the number of phone calls that your client gets through the Adwords interface, and won’t be left in the dark as to how people are hearing about your client/business without the corresponding click data.  Also, if this is implemented correctly on your end, you will be able to show a much-improved ROI to your client. So be on the lookout for Google Call Metrics, and while you’re at it, get on Google Voice!

It is safe to say that Google Content Network advertising has been around for a while.  The ability to target ads based on the category of website being viewed was a huge step forward in terms of ad targeting, and continues to be a huge factor in any relevant PPC campaign.  Based on the keywords entered into a search query, as well as the type of websites that are being visited, Google will line up “relevant” ads. (I put this in quotes because every now and then Google seems to think that ads for Rogaine are relevant to me, and quite frankly its insulting as I have a full head of hair…for now).  As advertisers, we can decide to let Google choose sites based on the ad’s category, or choose them ourselves—nothing new there.

But now you can target potential customers based on whether or not they have been to your site.  Basically, if someone clicks an ad or visits your site without converting, you can add code to your pages that will remember these visitors, and will continue to target them with ads as they travel across the Google Content Network.  In addition, these won’t be the same ads that weren’t successful in converting the first time (although they can be, but that doesn’t seem like a good strategy), but can be tailored for that visitor’s preferences.

For instance, if you have a visitor who went to your retail shoe site, but didn’t convert, and you are going to offer a discount later in the day, you can tailor your ads to continue to show up for this person along the content network and alert them to the discount that you are now offering.  So, this potentially lost conversion can be re-targeted via remarketing, and can end up in a sale for your site.  Remarketing is definitely a tactic to consider pursuing.

And now Google is expanding this more “personal” strategy to be able to target specific demographic categories. Specifically speaking, the demographics that Google focuses on are age and gender.  This is determined based on browser viewing history, and based on the past few sites that the potential customer has visited, Google will offer ads that they deem relevant based on the common demographic that visits the previous sites.  So, hypothetically speaking, if a person visits many sites that a teenager typically does, Google will group them in the teen demographic and give them ads that are deemed relevant to teenagers.  So if you’re in the workforce and sick and tired of Miley Cyrus ads, well, its time to change your browser habits.

So now that we’ve covered the basics of remarketing and Google’s expansion into interest-based advertising, it’s time to cover some how-to.  In the Google Adwords Campaign Management dashboard, select your client.  In the tabs, up next to Reporting and Billing, is the “Audiences” tab.  Click on it, and you should see this:

From this screen, you can select “Add Audiences.”  And from there, you can determine which audiences to target.  Google suggests first targeting all visitors (Add All Site Visitors Option), and as long as you have a standard footer template for your site, you can add in the code you need to make this happen.  But there are several other strategies to consider.  For instance, one of the more frustrating issues for a retail site are “abandoned shopping carts.”  This is when a potential customer adds product to be purchased from your site, then bolts before the purchase (not this).  They are highly qualified, and close to a purchase, so targeting them via the Audiences tab is another strategy worth considering.  Basically, you’d create a tag on your view shopping cart or order confirmation page, and target them with an ad with a strong call to action.  These aren’t the only strategies—really you can target anyone who has visited your site that you want with the right combinations via the Audiences Tab.

So these two new additions to the arsenal of Google’s marketing strategies come with their own Pros and Cons.  The pros are obvious—your ads can be more accurately shown to potential customers with interest-based advertising, and can follow and continually target potential customers who are close to converting with remarketing.  In a nutshell, you will see more conversions.  But there is one major con that is of concern—people have recently complained of feeling stalked.  Many potential customers have raised concerns about the privacy of their internet browsing habits.  However, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has released this ad campaign to help counteract that claim, as really Google is not invading your privacy with either of these features, as Google only takes in to account recent browser history.

So, interest-based advertising and remarketing are really helping to expand the potential of your PPC campaigns.  Embrace it, and you could potentially see more conversions and clicks.

But before giving you the theory and step by step instructions, there are a few things we should agree on about the kind of bid management we’re going to do:

• ‘Great bids can’t fix a lousy campaign’. This is actually the title of chapter 15 of the ClickEquations eBook (highly recommended) and it’s right on the money. It basically comes down to this: if the relationship between the search queries, your keywords, ads and landing pages isn’t thoughtfully managed or optimized, bidding will not solve your problems.
• CPA might not be the optimal KPI for you. Especially if you sell goods with greatly differing prices or margins, goals like ROAS or ROI are more suitable. This article however, is about reaching a certain CPA. You might also use different CPA’s for different campaigns, that is not a problem with this method.
  If you measure your variable conversion value with the AdWords conversion tracker, then consider the method described by Brad Geddes in his article (Setting Max CPC) to align your bids with your ROI goals.
• The AdWords conversion tracker credits the last keyword (and corresponding ad) that was clicked before the conversion that followed. So when we use the AdWords conversion data, we’re also bidding based upon last click attribution. This might not be optimal, especially if you have a lot of keywords that often assist conversions. Luckily, you can find these keywords in your Search Funnels report and manually credit assisting keywords, if necessary.
  Conversion attribution is a subject worth exploring. Don’t forget to read what Andrew Goodman (Traffick) and Adam Goldberg (ClearSaleing) have to say about it before you join this debate.

• Consider the bids that the discussed method will provide you as suggestions, based on historical data. Your past data might not be predictive of the future, and when we change bids based on your statistics, we assume just that. So if you know that this assumption isn’t valid, then use your own judgment to change bids.
• We are going to change bids on the keyword level. So it will not work for your campaigns on the Display Network or for search keywords that have no conversions (more about these later).
• Conversion rates do not vary by position. The debate is still out on this one, although according to Google it shouldn’t vary much. As always, you should test this for yourself, but I personally believe there are tons of things that influence conversion rate more than ad position.
  And when changing bids based on conversation rates (which we will do), we simply have to assume these will not vary by ad position.
• You track conversions with the AdWords conversion tracker and are bidding manually. These are requirements for the method to work.
  Maybe you use the Conversion Optimizer in some campaigns, needless to say that you can’t change bids manually in these campaigns. And if the conversion optimizer is giving you good results, you shouldn’t want to.
  However, you can still use the method for campaigns that are not using automated bid management.

Theory

Before we go to the how-to section of this article, let me explain the simple theory it is based on:

Your CPA is the result of your CPC and conversion rate.

To calculate your CPA, you multiply your CPC by the number of clicks you need to get a conversion. If a click costs you $0.50 and you need a hundred clicks for a conversion, then your CPA will be $50.

You probably already knew that. And we also know that a lot of factors influence CPC (like quality score) and conversion rate (like your landing page) and that you should always keep optimizing these.

Now let’s turn the equation around: if you know that your target CPA is $40 and you need a hundred clicks for a conversion (i.e. your conversation rate is 1%), how much should you pay for that click?
Exactly, you should pay no more than $0.40 for that click, which happens to be 1% multiplied by $40. Consequently, if your conversion rate is 2% you can pay up to $0.80 to reach your target CPA of $40. And if your conversion rate is 100% you can bid your full CPA for that keyword. Just make sure your conversion tracker isn’t on the landing page instead of the thank you page first.

Hence, to calculate the right bid to reach your CPA, you simply have to multiply the conversion rate of a keyword with its target (or max) CPA.

So we’ll consider conversion rate as a given and CPC as the variable we will change to reach our CPA.

So how do we quickly do this with AdWords Editor and Excel?

1)     Open your account with AdWords Editor, get recent changes and download statistics for the date range you want to use to base your bid decisions on. I can’t tell you which date range is the right one. On the one hand you need enough conversions to be able to make decisions, on the other hand you don’t want to go too far back in time for the data to be representative. So choose a date range you’re comfortable with.

2)     Select the keywords tab on the account level to see all keywords within your account.

3)     Sort your keywords by conversions (make sure you have the conversions column in your view) and select all keywords that have at least 1 conversion:

Campaigns, ad groups and keywords have been blurred on purpose in the screenshots.

4)     Copy this selection.

5)     Paste this selection into a new Excel file. The only columns we need are: Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, Keyword Type, Max CPC and Conversion Rate (1-per-click, or many-per-click if you prefer to use many-per-click). You can safely remove all other columns.

6)     Now, in an empty column to the right, insert a formula that multiplies the conversion rate with your target (or max) CPA. In the example below the conversion rate of 8.06% (in cell F2) is multiplied by the target CPA of $40

Important: we are changing your Max CPC’s. As you know, this isn’t the same as your actual CPC. So you can enter a number that is slightly higher than your target CPA into the formula, if you feel comfortable doing so.

Furthermore, if you have different CPA’s for different campaigns, it is best to make these changes one campaign at a time (by filtering out all the other campaigns in Excel).

7)     Populate this column by double clicking the fill handle (the skinny plus sign that appears in the bottom right corner) in the cell in which you just entered the formula. Now all your new CPC’s are calculated:

8)     Now that you have your CPC’s that are aligned with your CPA and conversion rate in this column, we just need copy and paste them (as values) back into to the Max CPC column. You can overwrite the existing Max CPC’s in this column.

9)     If you want, you can format the Max CPC column to contain numbers and round off to two decimals. This isn’t necessary for the AdWords Editor import we’re going to do next.
However, AdWords Editor will not round up your CPC’s, but just use the first 2 decimals. So 3.536 will become 3.53. If you want this to become 3.54, format this column first.

10)  Select and copy the Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, Keyword Type and Max CPC (with your new CPC’s) columns in Excel.

11)  Go back to AdWords Editor and select the Keywords view on the account level.

12)  Click on the ‘Make Multiple Changes’ button and select ‘Add/Update Multiple Keywords’

13)  Now paste the selection you just made in Excel into the Keywords area. Make sure the box ‘My keyword information below includes columns for campaign and ad group names.’ is selected.

14)  When you click the Next button, it should say how many keywords will be updated. If you get the message that new Ad Groups or Campaigns will be created, something went wrong, so make sure you copied all the right columns.
If some keywords get ignored, that’s just because they already had the Max CPC you imported, so that’s fine.

15)  Congratulations, you have now aligned your CPC’s with your CPA and conversion rate!

Before you post these changes consider a few things:

• Some keywords may have gotten a very high Max CPC. Theoretically these CPC’s are justified, but you may not want to to set your bids this high. To review these, just order your keywords by Max CPC in AdWords Editor and manually lower the bids that are too high for your taste.
• You didn’t change the bids of keywords with 0 conversions. This doesn’t mean that these should stay untouched, especially if they accrue a lot of costs.
  You will have to manually adjust or even pause these keywords according to your CPA goals. For example, you could pause all keywords that have cost you (at least) 2 times your CPA and still didn’t convert. And you could lower bids to the first page bid estimates for all keywords that have cost you between 1 and 2 times your CPA and didn’t convert.
  If they are early buying cycle keywords, you might want to set them apart, assign other goals to them and let the Budget Optimizer do the bidding, as Brad Geddes describes in this article.

  These are just suggestions to get you thinking in a methodical way about bid management, feel free to use any limits and rules that work for you.

Use the advanced search and advanced bid changes options in AdWords Editor to quickly find these keywords and make these bid changes or reorganizations.

• You didn’t change the bids in your campaigns on the Display Network (if any). However, you could apply the same logic on the ad group level instead of the keyword level and change bids on the ad group level accordingly.

The title of this article promised you to align your bids within 5 minutes. Maybe the first few times will take you a bit longer, but once you get the hang of it, you will be done in a couple of minutes.

For me personally, it certainly beats reviewing keywords one by one and increasing or decreasing bids based on CPA & position.

If you’re going to try this out for your account, I’d love to hear your experiences! And If you’re not, I’d love to hear why

Guest Blogger Bio: Wijnand Meijer is Sr. Search Advertising Consultant at Netsociety, an online marketing agency based in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Brussels (Belgium).
Once a freelance web designer and online copywriter (between 2000 and 2006), he specialized in PPC in 2007 and is currently managing paid search campaigns for clients in the travel, finance and retail sectors.

Our week-long series of PPC time saving tips is now in full swing! Today I’ll be discussing how Google’s AdWords Editor and Microsoft’s adCenter Desktop can simplify your PPC management. Being the PPC geek that I am, when Google released Editor, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. While I’m comfortable using spreadsheets and manually creating campaigns with Excel, I always thought that was a pain in the butt – and a major time suck. To say the least, a drag-and-drop desktop application that does most of the work for me – don’t mind if I do! Thankfully, Microsoft followed suit (and used the new Office ribbon menu) adding a slight bonus to using adCenter. So, that’s a wrap on history, now it’s on to how these pieces of software will save you time and simplify your PPC management!

Google AdWords Editor

Instead of focusing on an Editor-how-to, I’m going to give you a quick recap of some of Editor’s best time-saving features. But first – if you aren’t using Editor yet, go and download it right now!

• The set-up of AdWords Editor allows you to quickly and easily navigate through your account. Every piece is broken down for separate management. Campaigns, ad groups, ads, placements and keywords all get their own tab – saving you time from navigating through the online version of AdWords.
• Need to optimize your account structure? Editor’s drag-and-drop features allow you to cut and paste ad groups, ads and keywords from one campaign to another with the click of a mouse. Needless to say, but it’s not that easy online or in a spreadsheet! Another bonus to this feature? This allows you to safely move keywords and ads without deleting them – thus keeping your Quality Score intact.
• This is a 2-parter. Being a desktop application, AdWords Editor allows you to make edits to your account indirectly – meaning the changes are on your desktop and not live. So, you can make adjustments as time allows, in short bursts, saving you from doing everything at once. The downside to this is when you work in an environment where the account management is shared between multiple users. If it’s on your desktop, the information isn’t available to anyone else. You can get around this by using Editor’s “Export for Sharing” feature. File > Export Changes for Sharing (AES) This can be a great time saver when there is an approval process in place or when an account’s workload is being shared. Simply download the file, and your manager or co-worker can simply upload the file into their copy of AdWords Editor to review the changes and make their own!

• Manage large, messy accounts (or have you inherited one)? Chances are you have keywords duplicated within your account. Editor simplifies the process of eradicating duplicated keywords. Tools > Find Duplicated Keywords Find exact duplicates (Strict Word Order), or any duplication. Find duplicates by match type. And then look for duplicates within ad groups, campaigns or across your entire account. Editor creates a list of all duplicates that you can easily scroll through and begin making the appropriate changes (i.e. deleting duplicates!).

• One of the first beefs I had with AdWords Editor was the fact that it didn’t house any keyword research functionality – at least in the early versions. Now, Editor contains three tools for expanding your account’s keyword lists. Tools > Keyword Opportunities There are three tools here: Keyword Expansion, Keyword Multiplier and Search Based Keywords. The Expansion and Search Based tools are much like what you’ll find in the regular AdWords Keyword Tool. The Multiplier tool is a simple way to brainstorm new keyword variations to add to your account. What makes these tools great is that you can perform the research and immediately add the keywords into your campaigns/ad groups directly from AdWords Editor. There is no need to switch back and forth between programs.

Keyword Expansion

Keyword Multiplier

Search Based Keywords

• Account structure and optimization is so important to your PPC success. However, it is possible to get to a point where you start running out of ideas for how to break down your keywords. AdWords Editor has a nifty tool called the Keyword Grouper. Tools > Keyword Grouper Use this tool to scan your ad groups. As its name implies, this tool will group related keywords together giving you ad group ideas for further optimization. Editor then allows you to create text ads and save these ad groups to your campaigns – all with just a few clicks of the mouse!
• And last but not least – how about a quick laundry list of simplifying, time saving features:
  • Manage multiple accounts without leaving the interface (great for when you have an MCC).
  • Pull performance stats into Editor and make active management changes direct from the software.
  • Never have to save your changes – it’s automatic. Just do your work and close the software. Those changes will be waiting as long as you need them to.
  • Account wide Find/Replace. This is good if you have frequent sales and ad text changes (just remember your Quality Score and keep one ad active!).
  • Manage all spending (bids, budgets), geo-targeting and network (Google, Search Network, Content Network) changes from Editor.
  • Ads will be filtered through an Editorial Guidelines filter automatically, and if you have to submit exclusions for certain ads to be approved – you can submit multiple exclusions simultaneously.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop

If you had asked me a little over a year ago who would be next to create a desktop PPC platform, my answer would’ve been Yahoo!. And I would’ve been wrong. Instead, Microsoft upped the antie and created adCenter Desktop. While it is still technically in BETA testing, the software is being rolled out to more and more advertisers each month. I’ve got to admit, for all the faults with adCenter, this is one sexy piece of software. Leave it to Microsoft to leverage the power of their other brands to make an impression. adCenter Desktop utilizes the ribbon menu from the Office 2007 suite and really looks great. But beyond mere looks, it has some great features that can really simplify your adCenter PPC management. To kick things off – if you aren’t using adCenter Desktop yet, login to your account and visit this site right now!

• First things first – adCenter Desktop gives you the same freedoms as Google’s AdWords Editor. Those freedoms being the ability to drag and drop keywords, ads and ad groups and utilize simple copy and paste features to speed up the process of managing your accounts.
• One of the coolest things going for adCenter is their use of their {param} placeholders for keywords. In the adCenter interface, this is clunky and not all that simple to manage. But with Desktop – all those worries go away. Now it’s as simple as clicking on a keyword and entering “param’s” 1-3 in the keyword editor!

• If you utilize URL tagging for adCenter (say for Google Analytics?), it is now possible to make global account changes to your destination URLs. For example, if your utm_term parameter was mistakenly listed as {QueryString}, it’s as simple as using the Advanced URL Changes tool to find/replace that mistake and enter the correct parameter of {keyword}. And everyone says, “ooohhhh.”
• Just like Google’s Editor, adCenter Desktop provides performance metrics to simplify account management from the software. Microsoft has taken this a step farther in 2 ways: 1) you can set Alerts that will send you messages based on your campaigns, ad groups, etc. dropping below certain performance thresholds and 2) you can highlight campaigns, ad groups and keywords and see the sum of their spend and impressions (and other metrics if you set it up that way) in the lower right hand corner of the window. Plus, you can toggle between the Sum and Average. Sweet!

Create Performance Alerts

Performance Sum or Average

• Because adCenter Desktop is built on the Office platform, there are certain features available. If there are certain functions within the software that you use regularly, you can add them to your Quick Access Toolbar (right next to the Office button). I have these customized in Word, Excel – so why not adCenter Desktop, right?
• Keyword research is now a much more seamless process. On the Research tab, you have access to a plethora of tools. Use the Similar Keywords, Extracted Keywords, Frequent Keywords and Category Keywords tools to expand your keyword lists – and add them to your ad groups with the click of a button. Looking for intelligence and estimation? You can do that too with the keyword-level Montly Traffic tool and the Keyword Bids estimation tool.

• Do you like charts? If so, adCenter Desktop’s Dashboard system allows you to instantly chart your various performance metrics by simply highlighting the appropriate campaigns, ad groups and keywords. I’m chart-crazy, but organizing data and creating charts in Excel take time – this is SUCH a time saver.

• And now for the rapid fire of cool, simple, time saving features of adCenter Desktop:
  • Global Find/Replace.
  • Create Favorites in your Dashboard. Have ad groups or keywords that you are hyper-sensitive about? Add them as a favorite so you can point-click-and-manage without navigating through your entire account!
  • Export to Excel – if you can’t do it all in the software, you can simply take it out and manage away.
  • Manage all spending, geo-targeting and various settings directly from adCenter Desktop.
  • Auto save and Auto submit. I mention this because the original version of adCenter Desktop did neither of these things. If you forgot to hit the “save” icon, you lost your changes. In order to submit new ad groups, you were forced to publish your changes, then go back and manually submit ad groups online – or after publishing, going back through and choosing to submit them as active ad groups. All-in-all, both of those changes are mega-time savers.

I could write on and on and on about both Google’s AdWords Editor and Microsofts adCenter Desktop, but alas, all good things must come to an end. There was a special request to include info on the adCenter Add-in for Excel – but I shall keep that for another blog post. Rest assured though, that many of the features found in the new adCenter Desktop can be found in the Add-in for Excel. Regardless, I hope you found some new tips and tricks for both of these time-saving, simplifying pieces of sofware.

How do you simplify your PPC management with AdWords Editor and/or adCenter Desktop? Leave me a comment!

1. Make account changes offline: post them when you’re ready

I think one of the best things about Adwords Editor is that you can make any amount of changes you’d like within one account or multiple accounts, then post your changes when you’re ready. This way if someone needs to review the changes before they’re made live, there’s no need to deal with a messy spreadsheet to send around from person to person. Each time you make a change within the application, it automatically saves it. That way anyone can look at the changes made and approve them if need be.

2. Add multiple contextual, mobile and image ads at the same time

If you’re using all three advertising methods within Adwords this feature makes it super easy to manage them. You can select ad ad group and click the ‘Add Multiple Text Ads/Mobile ads/Image Ads’, enter your text or upload your images, then post!

3. Copy and paste ad text, ad groups, keywords, or campaigns into your account

Not only can you copy and paste these items into within the same account, but you can actually copy them into a completely separate account as well.

How to do it: It’s literally as easy as it sounds: Copy the ad texts, keywords, ad groups or campaigns you want to paste, click the “Open new account” link from the file drop down menu then paste these items into a new or existing account.

4. Find/Replace Tool

Personally, this is a tool I couldn’t live without! The find/replace tool is the same tool you would use in Microsoft Excel or Word. It’s incredibly useful in Adwords editor if you’re looking to edit several ads simultaneously. This tool is especially nice if you have a rotating promotion like Free Shipping or a site wide sale that you need to swap one out for the other. If you find you need to replace copy in several ad text or keywords, etc, the tool is located under the edit drop down, labeled Replace Text in Selected Items.

5. Easily find and fix errors

When you’re adding keywords or creating new ad text, Adwords Editor is great about flagging anything that could potentially create an error within the Adwords system. Once you see the error, you can easily fix it before it is posted to your account.

In conclusion, using Adwords editor can help you make changes to your account much faster and easier. Again, it’s a FREE desktop application tool you can download here