The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

While Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing remain the two most popular search marketing networks, Microsoft AdCenter offers a great opportunity to broaden your reach, often into an area where your cometitors have not yet gone.  Microsoft knows that many of their new customers are already running Google AdWords campaigns, and the format of an AdCenter campaign is almost identical to that of an AdWords campaign, so Microsoft is able to offer a streamlined importing process.

AdCenter asks you to import your campaign from Google AdWords in a different manner than Yahoo does.  Instead of exporting your account from Google AdWords Editor, they ask you to run an Ad Report from the AdWords interface.

Step 1: Generate a Report in AdWords

Sign in to your Google AdWords account.

1. Click the Reports tab.
2. Click Create a New Report ».
3. Under Report Type, select Ad Performance.

4. Under Settings, select the following:

• Under Ad Variations, check only Text Ad
• Under View (Unit of Time), select Summary from the drop-down menu.
  
• Under *Date Range, select a long enough date range that all of your keywords and ads will have received at least one impression. Last thirty days is typical enough.
  
• Under Campaigns and Ad Groups, select All campaigns and all their ad groups (unless there are certain campaigns and ad groups that you don't wish to import to AdCenter.

5. Under Advanced Settings, click Add or Remove Columns, and then select the following options (each under it's own section headings):                                              

Level of Detail

• Campaign
• Ad Group
• Keyword / Placement (or Keyword)
• Ad Id

Attributes

• Match Type
• Headline
• Description Line 1
• Description Line 2
• Display URL
• Current Maximum CPC
• Keyword Destination URL
• Destination URL

Performance Statistics

• Select impressions (this value is irrelevant, but required to run the report).

Click Create Report

Step 2:  Save the Report as a CSV (for Excel) file

1. Click on the report you just created in the Report Center
2. When the report loads, click on Export Report and select .csv (for Excel).

Step 3: Re-format the Report in Excel to Upload into AdCenter

1. Remove the first few rows that contain generic information about the report.
2. There is probably a "Total" row at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Remove this row.
3. Remove the following columns:

• Ad ID
• Impressions (or whatever other performance statistic you aribitrarily chose)
  

4. Move the Current Maximum CPC and Keyword Destination URL columns to the position immediately after Match Type.  The columns should now be, in order:

• Campaign
• Ad Group
• Keyword / Placement (in step 5, this changes to Keyword)
• Match Type (in step 5, this changes to Keyword Matching)
• Current Maximum CPC
• Keyword Destination URL (Note: if this column contains any instances of "default URL", delete this text and leave the cell blank)
  
• Headline
• Description Line 1
• Description Line 2
• Display URL
• Destination URL

5. Download the AdCenter template file (to download, click here). Rename your columns to match this template.  Your header row should now read:

• Campaign   
  
• Ad Group   
  
• Keyword   
  
• Keyword Matching   
  
• Current Maximum CPC   
  
• Keyword Destination URL   
  
• Headline   
  
• Description Line 1   
  
• Description Line 2   
  
• Display URL   
  
• Destination URL

6. Save your CSV file as an Excel XLS file. (Note: Microsoft AdCenter is not yet compatible with Excel 2007 XLSX files.)

Step 3: Import the File into AdCenter

1. Open your AdCenter account to the Campaigns tab.
2. Click on Import campaigns...
3. Select your language and time zone settings.
4. Upload your XLS file
5. Once your file is uploaded, you will have to go in and manually review each ad group, and change it's status from Draft to Active.  This can be a lengthy process if you have many ad groups, but there is no shortcut currently available.  You must click "Continue" through each step of a 5-step process to review and activate each group.
6. As you confirm your first ad group, you will need to set a campaign monthly budget.  Note that budgets are monthly in AdCenter, instead of daily as in Google AdWords.

Ehren, Clickable SEM Guru

Note: Clickable employees volunteer several hours a week to helping other search marketers succeed. "Clickable Gurus" participate in numerous online
search communities to provide straightforward answers to numerous questions,and,each week, one of the gurus posts a search marketing tip to the Clickable Blog.

The marketplace in which we bid on keywords to drive traffic to our websites is a bustling, high speed

The marketplace in which we bid on keywords to drive traffic to our websites is a bustling, high speed

If you’ve maximized your search advertising revenues on Google and Yahoo, it's time to expand