How to Get on the AdCenter Editor Beta (ACE) Program?

As some know, but seemingly many do not, Microsoft has been inviting small groups of adCenter users to try out their adCenter editor beta (ACE). When I first heard about this rumored tool I could not for the life of me figure out how in the world I can get on this special “beta list”. I searched for information online but found very little information. No links, no blog entries, no articles. I had to resort to asking colleagues and even then many of them were not aware of this beta program. Perhaps Microsoft wanted to announce this tool with a bang and keep in under wraps during the beta period? Who knows?

Signing up for Beta

So how did I do it? Someone must say something!

Perhaps this is not the news some of you were looking for, but I had to go through our dedicated account rep. We made sure they had a clear understanding of how large our collection of accounts were as a whole and asked if we could sign up for this rumored beta program. Our rep had previously not brought up this beta test, but was more than willing to help us out once we brought up the issue. We were sent a signup form and that was that. Now we had to wait.

Invitation:

Several weeks later we were invited into the AdCenter Editor Beta (ACE) Program. Considering MSN AdCenter incredibly difficult web UI we’ve always limited our exposure in MSN. Though MSN’s traffic great, there is so little of it thus the time needed to run a MSN account is not worth the benefits. Needless to say this tool was met with great excitement.

Installation:

Of course in Microsoft style the signup process took up 50 steps. I was hoping for a big “Download Now” button, but then I remembered this is Microsoft. I had to sign up for a hotmail/live.com account. Then register for their Microsoft Connect service. Several steps along the way it asked me to go to a particular pages but there were no links so I had to navigate around to find it. Perhaps this is an ingenious way of weeding out the less tech savvy adCenter users? After clicking around endlessly I found myself finally in the middle of text heavy page staring at a download link. Finally! I downloaded the editor then hit setup. An error popped up saying I was missing some key files. No instructions on how to get them. Great. I went back to the download page, read through the page and discovered if you are using firefox you need some plugin. So I hit the link and I am promptly redirected to the Mozilla site. I happen to think ahead and copied the URL of the download page since I realized once you install the plugin it’s going to ask to restart firefox. So I install it, install the plugin, restart firefox, repaste the URL in the browser. Download the file again. This time it finally installed! After it finished installing, it disappears leaving me to wonder if I am supposed to wait for something pop up. I guess not. I had to go find the program in my computer and run it. Great! The first account I download had no information. Not a great start. The second one I downloaded came in successfully. Great! Then the stats don’t download. So I downloaded a third one and this one everything seems to be fine…

Pros & Cons

Here are some quick hits.

PROS:

1) Interface: MSN web interface is incredibly difficult to use, so any alternative is a huge boon!

2) Basic Features: Many features found on Google’s Adwords editor is also found here

a. Uploading & Downloading of Campaigns/Adgroups/Bids

b. Download Statistics

c. Download into Excel

3) Advanced Features

d. Additional Keyword List Builder Tools

e. Geo-Targetting! No more targeting one Adgroup at a time!

CONS:

1) Switching Accounts (no easy way. Must reenter login information every time)

2) Stats don’t always download properly

3) One of my accounts won’t even download.

4) Lots of Crashes

Looks like the beta is still buggy, but since it is a beta I give MSN plenty of leeway. Hopefully MSN will work hard on this editor, improve the UI because I sure have a lot of money to spend if this thing works right! Will keep you posted.

Other Links.AdCenter Community

Paul LeeSr. Manager of Web MarketingLeadQual

Tags: Adcenter, Microsoft, MSN, News, Search Engine Marketing, SEM

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.