MSN Adcenter advertisers have been advised that an editorial audit may be carried out on their campaigns following a change to their editorial audit rules of 15 January.
The email contains the following advice: -
Your current campaigns may undergo an additional review to ensure that your ads and keywords meet Microsoft adCenter editorial guidelines as of January 15, 2007. If your campaigns do not pass the audit, you may receive valid editorial rejections for your ads or keywords. Help increase your campaign success by ensuring that your ads are shown to the Live Search users who may be most interested in your offer.
To improve the likelihood of an existing ppc advert passig the editorial audit we are advised to follow the revised editorial policies and verify that:
- Keywords are relevant to the landing page and website copy
- Ad copy meets the content guidelines
- Website destination URLs are relevant to the ads and selected target audience
It seems strange that the adverts have not been scruitinised on this basis before. Previously I have had campaigns suspended some 6 weeks after go live and this looks like another editorial review brought on by evolving policies within MSN.
Other tips offered include advice to remove any keywords that are not relevant.
“Consider modifying your landing page to provide more specific content.
Review your site for any pages where content is more relevant to the product or service offered and consider changing your destination URLs to those pages.
Expand keyword phrases for greater relevance to the product or service offered.
Include the keyword associated with your target audience in the first line of your ad. ”
“This process helps maintain the quality of experience for Live Search users. Search ads that have a low relevance score generally have a reduced click-through rate compared with relevant ads. A low relevance score can translate into poor performance for your ad.”
Opening the door to pushback and subjective arguments the communication then goes on to say that you can appeal your rejected ads.
“You can appeal keywords and ads that are relevant to the product or the service that is being advertised. Please remove all the irrelevant keywords from your keyword lists, review your landing pages, and group your keywords according to the topic that appears on the landing page to avoid “Landing page” and “Inaccessible website” rejections. ”
Unfortunately the editorial review often involves people remote from a market taking decisions on relevancy with poor results. Lets hope that this editorial review process removes the really irrelivant ads and leaves the relevant material active.