I recently had a conversation with a former Atlas colleague, someone who has extensive industry experience. We talked about conversion attribution"what the right conversion modeling looked like, what the right technology would be to support it )yes, my answer is still our own Engagement Mapping(. And then he asked: Why do you think most advertisers are still not measuring and optimizing using some sort of attribution model?

Microsoft Advertising adCenter will be undergoing scheduled maintenance that will impact the adCenter API from 11:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. PDT on Saturday, August 20th. Heres what you need to know During this time, your ads will continue to serve, but you will be unable to access campaigns or make updates via the UI, Desktop or API during the maintenance window. If youre working on offline updates via the Desktop, you may upload them once the maintenance is complete.

After eight grueling rounds over eight weeks, we have now announced the winners of the inaugural Digital ZENSES Championship. We would like to congratulate StarCom MediaVest in Hong Kong, the Digital ZENSES agency of the year, and StarCom MediaVest Media Executive, Steven Chan, the Digital ZENSES Master of the year. With this win, executives from Starcom MediaVest will be hosted by Microsoft Advertising at SPIKES Asia in Singapore, later in September.

Mark your Outlook calendar where our API experts will not only walk through the latest feature available in v8, but will take your questions as well. Date : August 18th, 2011 Time : 1:00 P.M 2:00 P.M. PST Join the meeting . The Microsoft Advertising adCenter API Version 8 will be available in the Production environment in August.

At Microsoft Advertising we strive to offer the newest and most creative tools and techniques, allowing marketers to explore news ways of engaging customers. This week weve launched a campaign that does just that. Capital Ones 'Credit Made Clearer' campaign is about educating consumers of the potential finance orientated pit-falls when traveling. When combined with inspirational and useful holiday advice this makes for a compelling and useful resource,

Having created an adCenter account and set up campaigns with ad groups, keywords and text ads, Shahs Cars is now well on its way to become a roaring success in the online marketplace. The purpose of this blog post is to discuss what to do now once your account is live. In Charlies previous post, Pay Per Click )PPC( for SMB Part 11 - Understanding All Of The Key Performance Indicators & Reports , we learnt how the performance of your account is tracked and measured.

In March, Editorial guidelines pertaining to intellectual property )IP( went through a substantial change in North America. Advertisers are now allowed to bid on other advertisers trademarked terms as long as they are categorically relevant. While this change brings Microsoft Advertising in line with the current industry standards, questions regarding fair trademark use still come up from time to time. As a way of keeping you informed,

You told us that adCenters budgeting system was too complex, inconsistent with other ad platforms, and difficult to manage. We were listening, and were pleased to have arrived at a major development milestone aimed at addressing this feedback. Last Fall, we committed to making the changes necessary to address your top pain points and asks when it came to adCenters budgeting. Following last weeks adCenter release, we believe weve delivered against these commitments.

In March, Editorial guidelines pertaining to intellectual property )IP( went through a substantial change in North America. Advertisers are now allowed to bid on other advertiser's trademarked terms as long as they are categorically relevant. While this change brings Microsoft Advertising in line with the current industry standards, questions regarding fair trademark use still come up from time to time. As a way of keeping you informed,

We had a chance to catch up with Caroline Keane who is an ad support manager at Microsoft in Dublin. Apart from investigating tool problems she helps with the planning and prioritization of future adCenter features and fixtures. Behind every company are many teams and individuals with their own specialisms and insights so we asked Caroline what she does and what advice she could give from her teams experience to help adCenter blog readers. What is it that you do at Microsoft?

Sky's the Limit: API Mystique In the past, whenever I spoke about APIs"to clients, partners, or even internal folks"I did so with a healthy dose of trepidation. The tricky thing about an API is that it's not tangible to the likes of sales folks, or the majority of clients we have daily conversations with"it lives within the realm of the mysterious "backend," and seems to be deeply understood )start to finish( only by developers and IT pros.

We live extremely busy lives. When were awake, were online. Whether its to check email, look for information, pay bills, research, or even chat with family and friends, a lot of what we do is in the online world. In order to be more time-efficient and organised, many of us are putting in more effort to plan our visits online. We are moving away from meaningless random surfing to better planned,

To many of us c onsumers , search is a pivotal element in our life. It helps us organise our days, achieve key tasks, solve existential questions, find our way in the endless possibilities of the web Yet it is a fact that too few of us Advertisers really comprehend the full role that search marketing can really play in their campaign. In 2010,

Today, we will be making updates to our broad match and phrase match behavior. The goal of this enhancement is the deliver higher-performing and more relevant impressions and clicks to advertisers invested in those match types. We suggest that you monitor your budgets to ensure your account is prepared to take on additional traffic. Youll also want to monitor bids to ensure youre able to compete effectively for any additional clicks and impressions.

In these economically lean times, advertisers are often looking for creative ways to do more with less. So I recently did a little research over here in the UK, and came across some great examples of yester-year, showcasing how a little often goes a long way. Even though they were executed a while ago, these campaigns are still talked about by marketers and their creative flair still resonates today. Example one: Carslberg dont do litter. In one example,

So Shahs Cars has campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Its ad copy reads like more digestible Shakespeare and it is live on the web. Job done, right? Wrong, Shahs Cars PPC journey has only just begun. Using Microsofts Advertising tools you can now follow your campaigns, find out how your ads are performing and improve them with amazing results. First,

This weeks Ad Vision interview is with Boondoggle's Tom De Bruyne, who gives Kaila the inside scoop on what kind of talent his team are looking for, how brands should be thinking about storytelling )or storyBUILDING( in the digital space, and where he gets his creative inspiration from. We love his mantra that tactics are the new creative. When it comes to digital creativity,

Sage Lewis is President of SageRock Inc., a digital marketing company founded in 1999 with the goal of helping clients engage customers across an ever expanding interactive marketplace through multiple channels such as search and social media. To learn more about Sage and the company, visit the SageRock, Inc. website . Tina In my hometown, there was a small independent movie theater that, like all small independent movie theaters, went out of business.

Hear from Chris Chen, Weber Shandwicks Director of Digital, on where he sees change, challenge and exciting opportunities for advertising & PR in the year ahead. View the video here.

Microsoft and Yahoo! continue to work actively toward implementing our Search Alliance internationally, and today we are reaching an important milestone for Europe. On August 3 rd , the transition of Yahoo! Search back-end technology over to the Bing platform begins for France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK. This means that soon Yahoo! organic search results, on both PC and mobile, will be Powered by Bing as it is already the case in the United States, Argentina,