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MSN AdCenter announces Campaign Level negative keywords, a big step in search query quality control.
2/13/2012
This week MSN AdCenter, the advertising platform behind Yahoo! and Bing sponsored search ads, announced that they are now adding support for campaign level negative keywords. Previously, negative keywords could only be applied at the ad group level. This change gives advertisers much more control over how they ensure the quality of the search queries that trigger their ads. There is now no hard limit on the number of negative keywords available in MSN AdCenter; the official limit is "thousands" at the campaign level and "thousands" at the ad group level.
Most advertisers have sets of words that they want to apply as negatives across all of their campaigns. For retailers it might be "free," for software companies it may be "cracks" or "keygen" - words that identify the searcher as someone who is definitely not looking to buy from them. While AdCenter had increased their negative keyword limit in mid-2010, it was still possible to use up your allotted negative keywords by having to apply the same words to every single ad group. Even more common, some of these negative keywords could be missed when new ad groups were added. The ability to add keywords to the entire campaign at once will cut down on mistakes and oversights that cause unwanted traffic.
In November 2011, AdCenter introduced another change to how they handle negative keywords, by adding exact match negative keywords. This also had a huge impact on controlling the quality of search queries that trigger ads. Previously all negative keywords were treated as phrase match, meaning that if you wanted to buy the word "golf club covers" but exclude the keyword "golf club," you couldn't. Now, by adding "golf club" as an exact match negative keyword, you can still receive traffic on "golf club covers" while not displaying ads for "golf club." This gives advertisers the control to fine-tune the display of their ads, improving conversion rates and return on invertment.
The fact that MSN AdCenter has made two big improvements to their handling of negative keywords in the past few months is a good sign, an indication that they're committed to improving the quality of their product, and that they're acting on advertiser feedback. Advertisers that rely primarily on Google for their paid search advertising should take note, and consider branching out into the new audience that Yahoo! and Bing can offer.
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