Hello fellow PPC Hero followers! Today we have some great news about some new updates in Microsoft adCenter that promise to make our daily account management just a little bit easier. As Bing adCenter moves towards more Google-like qualities in its services and interface, it’ll make for more targeted account structures and even happier Account Managers!
So what are these updates? These are the changes that are available as of now in the adCenter interface and Desktop.
1. Location Extension
In this new change, adCenter will now allow us to implement our client’s business address and phone number within search ads. The actual number of locations that are now allowed to be uploaded to the adCenter interface has increased from 50 to 1,000 at the customer level. This is great help for those with business with actual locations, who can engage the audience’s attention by including their address and phone number right there in the ad. Furthermore, if these new ads are opted into the Bing Mobile network, the click-to-call functionality will be automatically enabled.
2. Browser Update
For those of that have been having some issues with using adCenter in various browsers, suffer no more! The adCenter interface should now be accessible through Chrome, Firefox, Safari and on both Mac and PC platforms.
3. Gender/Age Targeting
Bing has now removed the option of targeting based on gender or age. They recommend instead to use bid-boosting strategy to ensure your ads are targeting the intended audience.
4. AdCenter Desktop Update
The main change in the adCenter Desktop so far has been a more use friendly navigation bar. There has also been changes made to the multiple changes features, where you now get to review and edit the headers of your (for example) keywords before processing them into the system.
On top of these recent changes, here are two additional changes expected to roll out this Spring!
1. Negative Keywords
Starting possibly in mid-march, the negative keywords set at ad group and campaign level will be combined. What this will mean is that this new Negative keyword functionality will now be more similar to that of Google where the campaign level keywords will be applied throughout the ad groups, and the ad group negatives will no longer take priority over the campaign level negatives. They have also created a Negative Keyword Conflict Report which will identify the negatives that are in conflict. Keep an eye out for this change so that you can make your necessary changes to your ad group negatives as soon as this change goes into effect.
2. Global Targeting
As we reported in an earlier news update, the “market” distribution channel that currently exists in Bing will be removed and instead we’ll only have “language” as a targeting option. This will allow us to target to those who, for example, speak English, but live in Spain. For more information on this topic, here is our previous coverage of this change!
