Last week on PPC Tuesday I dove into MSN’s adCenter. If you missed it, be sure to go check it out.
Last year, MSN & Yahoo decided to merge their Search Advertising efforts to create a stronger product for those looking to advertise outside of Google.
This is going to transform the PPC landscape for many advertisers, and shape how search engine advertising is executed going forward.

Yahoo has been around longer than Google, providing a web portal that remains the source of web content for thousands of surfers. MSN has seen a steady rise in the popularity of its new search engine, Bing, and seems to be taking some attention away from the market leader, Google, which still controls over 70% of the search space.
The search alliance takes away the need for advertisers to choose where to spend their budget. Instead they have an alternative to Google to invest in. Yahoo will still maintain some relationships, but all PPC management and work will be done in MSN’s system. You will still be able to advertise on Yahoo.com, but it will be MSN delivering it. There are resources on either end to track the progress of the alliance, with Yahoo’s located at: Advertising.Yahoo.com/Transition/en_US and MSN is posting information And Microsoft’s can be found at: http://advertising.microsoft.com/learning-center/microsoft-transition-center
Basically, all of the advertising will be run through Microsoft, on both Bing & Yahoo search engines.

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If you have never advertised on MSN, we suggest you watch last weeks video to get your feet wet. If you have worked in MSN’s adCenter, then there will not be much of a learning curve with the transition.
If your MSN advertising already has similar targets as your Yahoo! advertising, there will not be much to change. If your Yahoo is different, then you will need to create new campaigns in MSN to house the new targets. If you do not currently have an MSN account, you will need to establish one prior to applying any Yahoo builds.
If you do need to move advertising over to MSN, there are some slight changes to Yahoo! advertising that will need to be adjusted in Yahoo!, before porting it over to MSN. This includes making sure ad headlines are less than 25 characters, as opposed to the 40 you are used to in Yahoo. You also lose a character in the ad body, going from 71 in Yahoo! to 70 in MSN.

Also, if you watched last week’s video, you will learn that MSN does not have conversion values, or the ability to measure revenue, like Yahoo does. This is an issue we take seriously and are trying to get solved as soon as possible. We are hopeful it will be in place in time for the transition.

Speaking of time, I am sure you are asking: “When are we transitioning?”
It should begin, in the United States, in a few weeks, probably around the beginning of August. It is hoped to be completed by early September, leaving everyone in a strong position for holiday shopping.
Other countries will follow after the new year, so as to not interrupt the holiday shopping season.
While this is the path that has been sketched out, we will see what happens when things start rolling out.
I hope this video has been helpful!