MSN AdCenter Desktop Application - Are They Finally Catching Up?

The long-waited MSN Adcenter's desktop application is in Beta and has been getting great reviews from the test users so far. No surprise, it's structured almost exactly like Google's Adwords Editor but honestly I don't care as long as it works better than current UI!!!

I've been a search engine marketer or about 3 years now and MSN's Adcenter has not been 'industry' friendly from Day 1. Google and Yahoo are way ahead of the game in search marketing share with the continuous imprvements the make to their algorithm and ad platforms. It may take a long while for MSN Adcenter to increase their market share but they have certainly made a great effort for the advertisers with the new Desktop Application.

I've just applied on the Beta List to get my hands on this tool and as I mentioned above, people are already giving great feedback on this tool. It gives the ability to make multiple changes to following components and will sure make our job way easier:

• Campaigns
• Adgroups
• Creative
• Keywords
• Negative Keywords

In addition, the AdCenter Desktop App has the keyword, demographic and bid research tools from their Ad Intelligence Excel plug-in. Cool stuff huh??? Here's another screenshot:


As usual, with Microsoft comes the flaws... Majority of user complaints come from download time (campaigns especially) and having to Save every page you are on... Hopefully, MSN listens to us marketers and fix these minor bugs before they roll the app out.

So, what does this mean for the marketers in the short term???
Well, MSN does not have a whole lot of share when it comes to Search Volume - a little over 8% according to SeekingAplha.com in June 08. Once deployed successfully, this tool will increase the keyword inventory of almost all advertisers and therefore increase the existing competition. Advertisers should definitely expect higher CPCs for the months following MSN's Adcenter Desktop Application release.