Microsoft adCenter Goes Local
Shortly after the launch of Rich Ads in Search (RAIS), Microsoft adCenter made available two additional ad offerings: location extensions and click-to-call. While both of these features have long since been available within the Google Adwords interface, the new ad formats are a welcome addition to Bing and Yahoo! Search advertising and a useful supplement to geo-targeting efforts.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, a location extension is an ad format that enables advertisers to display the business street address information alongside text ads; particularly effective for local businesses that rely heavily on foot-traffic. In Microsoft adCenter, up to 1,000 business locations can be uploaded to the interface and a business location will be displayed to users within a 50-mile radius. In the instance where several business locations exist in close proximity to each other, the business address closest to the user’s location will be shown.
Furthermore, when location extensions are implemented and smart phones are included in devices targeted, search ads will automatically have the click-to-call functionality on Bing for Mobile (currently unavailable for Yahoo! for mobile, but rumored to be coming soon).
Set up is free and can be implemented by following these simple steps.
1. From the Campaigns tab, select “Manage your business locations”.
2. Add locations by either of these methods:
• Add a single location by clicking “Create location” and completing the form.
• Add multiple locations by filling out and saving an Excel template as in the example below, and click “Import” to upload the excel file to the platform.
3. Apply the location extensions to either 1 or multiple campaigns.
• To add location extensions to a single campaign:
i. Select the campaign from the campaigns tab and click “Edit your campaign settings”.
ii. Under Advanced settings, select the Location extension option under Ad extensions and click “Save”.
• To add location extensions across multiple campaigns:
i. From the campaigns tab, select the campaigns you wish to apply extensions to and select “Make bulk changes”.
ii. From the dropdown menu, select “Ad Extensions”, and check the location extension box.
This new offering is but one of several recent Google-esque enhancements that Microsoft adCenter has recently implemented to improve upon their services. While they still lag behind Google in terms of innovation and interface functionality these new ad formats show progress in the right direction, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with next.
Microsoft (MSFT) may be a bit behind Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) when it comes to creating a voice-enabled personal assistant for its mobile devices, but it seems the company does have plans to add better speech recognition capabilities to its Bing mobile app in the near future. MSFTKitchen has posted a video demonstration of a new prototype for voice recognition software on Windows Phone devices that’s intended to show how Microsoft has worked to reduce latency and word recognition errors while improving phones’ ability to accurately hear you in crowded, noisy areas.’