Part of keeping your campaigns running smoothly involves monitoring your adCenter reports for signals that something needs your attention. One of the most obvious red flags is when you see your position slipping lower than you would like it to be. In order to keep your positioning competitive, you should be updating your bids to keep pace with other advertisers who are bidding on the same keywords you are.

As the holidays approach, you may find that your cost per click )CPC( has begun to increase on some of your keywords â€" this is fairly common whenever there is increased competition for popular terms. To help mitigate this seasonal increase in spend, there are a couple of strategies you can employ to help lower your CPC. Two of the most effective methods for lowering CPC are to bid across all match types as well as to include negative keywords .

Want to improve the relevance of your landing page without changing so much as a period? Improve the quality of your paid search ad. I'll admit there doesn't seem a direct causal connection between the perceived relevance of your landing page and the quality of your search ad. That's why Microsoft hired Enquiro Research for a project earlier this year to better understand the impact of ad quality. Enquiro used eye tracking to directly measure user engagement.

Do you struggle trying to find your ad on Live Search? Are you unsure if it is live? If you know it's not live, are you uncertain how to troubleshoot the issue? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, we can help! We have created a page on our advertising site , with you in mind, which has great information to help you find your wandering ad, including an ad-finding tutorial and checklist.

Satya Nadella made some announcements during his keynote speech at PubCon in Las Vegas this morning. In his speech Satya talked about the evolution of search engines from directories to the use of keywords but suggested there is more to come in the form.

I'm in Las Vegas at Pubcon , the internet marketing conference organised by the folks at WebmasterWorld.com It's a huge event running over three days and includes six tracks on SEO: Organic Search, SEM: Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliates.

Having a popular, well-known brand can be a real asset to any search marketing campaign, you know it' and so do your competitors. While Microsoft Advertising's editorial policy on trademarks requires all advertisers to agree that they will not infringe upon the trademarks of others, enforcing this policy is challenging. What do you do when you discover that your competitors are bidding on your trademarked terms or are using them in their ad copy? Well,

Following on from our announcement a few weeks ago that our customers can now follow updates from the adCenter Blogs & Forums by following us on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/adCenterBlog - we have now launched a page on Facebook so you can stay connected.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Microsoft Advertising: Insights, the official podcast of Microsoft Advertising. Insights will cover all things digital advertising, primarily focusing on search out of the gate. We'll discuss the state of the industry.

When I was at school we were still using chalk and blackboards to communicate so typing has never been my strong point. I've never understood how some folks are so talented that they manage to blog live from conferences and not manage to sound discombobulated.

We hope to see you at Pubcon , coming up soon in Las Vegas. Be sure to check out the full agenda , and register . Here are some speakers from Microsoft who'll be participating in panel sessions. Tues. Nov. 11 10:00 - 11:20 PPC Engine Vendor Panel.

For those of you interested in learning more about optimizing your campaigns for the holidays, I wanted to make sure you saw the Holiday Advertising Guide on advertising.microsoft.com . The guide includes some interesting data: Online retail shopping.

adCenter Help has been updated to reflect the many changes since last week's release . New topics include Pause an ad and Pause a keyword . The Microsoft adCenter Help URLs spreadsheet is updated as well. This spreadsheet allows you to bookmark Help.

Many of our adCenter blog posts refer to a free tool we offer called the adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007 . I wanted to call this tool out specifically, in case you are not familiar with it - the Add-in can help you expand your keyword lists and plan.

Over the weekend, we upgraded the adCenter interface and added new features to help make managing your adCenter campaigns easier. Several of these features were requested right here in the community, so we want to thank you for your feedback. Your feedback.

New editorial upgrades include a faster review process to help your campaigns go live more quickly, and enhanced inline information and help for disapprovals and character limits. Ads and keywords are now reviewed independently, and their editorial statuses.

Our customers have expressed a need for more account and user role options in adCenter, and we now offer more flexibility in this area. These improvements will help you and your teams manage your adCenter accounts more efficiently and ensure that your.

After our upgrade, you can now get keyword bid suggestions and performance estimates for your content ads - features that were previously available only for search ads. On your Keywords page, you can help boost the performance of your content ads by.

Our upgrade includes several new features in the campaign management area of adCenter. We're excited to share these features and improvements because they've been requested by customers right here in the community â€" we're pleased to deliver.

Microsoft adCenter and Live Search will be well represented at the 2nd Search Marketing Expo conference being held at the New Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden on the 4th and 5th of November 2008. The show will open on the Tuesday with a keynote speech.