Youre just about to start your first search campaign for Shahs Cars , advertising your new car insurance product, but you have no idea what the average CPC is, what the seasonality looks like, what your typical audience is and you want to go live as soon as possible. Where do you start? The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool is here to help ) download here (.

The final session I attended today was How the Search Alliance is Paying Off for Search Marketers, which included a presentation from Efficient Frontiers Director of Business Analytics, Dr. Siddharth Shah and concluded with a combination panel discussion and audience Q&A with Bing Search Evangelist Theresa Elliot and Yahoo!s Joe Stevens, a Regional Lead Search Strategist. Dr. Shah, or Sid as everyone called him,

The Microsoft Advertising adCenter recent 2011 Upgrade includes several improvements that have consistently been requested in the feedback we've received. This upgrade will provide easier ways to manage your search and content advertising strategies with adCenter. The most exciting changes in this latest adCenter release include campaign and keyword management improvements, and better business insights. Enhanced Business Insights Performance Dashboard improvements .

With more than 650 million mobile searches each month on Yahoo! and Bing, it's easy to see why online marketers are interested in tapping the power of mobile search to better reach these highly engaged, highly motivated users. But are your mobile marketing strategies capturing the minds )and wallets( of mobile visitors, or are you sending smartphone users to your competition? Join us for a free webinar and find out!

Last week, we announced the Daily Budget option change was being rolled out to all daily budget campaigns. You may have read about these planned changes in our recent blog . On June 1 st , in response to advertiser feedback , we implemented the Daily.

Disapproved Content. Two of the most hated words in online advertising. Although you may not be able to avoid disapproved content entirely, the tips in this blog post may enable you to make some improvements in your online content that you.

Weve heard your requests to make our budget options simpler. On May 12, we implemented the Daily Budget change for new and edited daily budget campaigns. You might have seen our earlier blog posts on this change. To give you time to plan, we waited.

In last weeks Introduction to adCenter post I gave you the basics of adCenter and how you can use it to manage your campaigns, track performance and generate new keywords. This week Im going to show you how to do all this and more within the adCenter Desktop, an application that can be installed on your computer and used offline. adCenter Desktop is great for managing campaigns in bulk, meaning you can make edits to multiple items at once.

On Saturday, June 4, 2011, adCenter web UI, Desktop )Beta( and API will be unavailable from approximately 11:00 AM PDT to 7:00 PM PDT for routine system maintenance. Users in all markets will be unable to access adCenter during this time. Please note.

SMX seems a little while ago now especially as I went cycling in Barcelona straight after the event )recommendable!( Nevertheless I do want to share the highlights of what Philippe Huysmans -EMEA Director, APS Mobile, Local & Commerce- was telling the audience in the Whats new in local and mobile session at this event. Coming from a search background myself, it was fascinating to see how search can be leveraged to reach potential customers on the go.

If you havent been to HPs 367 Addison Avenue Blog , its a great resource for small-to-medium business owners with helpful tips, tricks and advice to help bring your business to the next level. Melissa Zieger, the editor at 367 Addison, has been kind enough to share some of her content with us; some of it will be cross-posted here from time to time. Tina Like millions of others, I was intrigued by the phenomenal reach and impact of the Old Spice Man viral campaign.

This year was the first time I attended the SMX London event and I was very impressed with the number of attendees coming from all over Europe. Its one of those conferences where every speaker is expected to innovate by providing examples and research.

Youd think after 6 years in the search industry, I would have been to an SMX or SES or some kind of conference by now, but youd be wrong. Its not that I havent wanted to goI havebut the circumstances never quite lined up well enough to make it possible until now. If youre going to SMX Advanced Seattle, look me up on SMX Connect and feel free to send me a friend request, or a request to meet up if youd like :(. For you conference veterans,

When you advertise on Bing and Yahoo! search, you'll reach the 36% of unique Microsoft and Yahoo! site searchers who dont use Google 1 . Plus, you'll not only be reaching more people, but these potential customers have been shown to spend more when making online purchases 1 . Now that you're armed with these helpful tidbits from comScore,

If youve been following our recent series of blog posts you should be up to speed with the basics of PPC search and the features offered by Bing . Were now going to run you through Microsoft adCenter which is the main tool that youll use to manage your campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords. adCenter can be accessed in two ways: using your web browser or by using the adCenter desktop application.

Albert Einstein pointed out before a search engine even existed that Information is not Knowledge. Information is, in broad terms, facts or data. On the other hand, knowledge is information or opinions of value. Confusing the two is a major mistake. You want knowledge that leads to action, and that is why Microsoft set about building a redefining Decision Engine rather than just another search tool.

Writing ads is easy, but writing great ads that get clicked can be a true challenge. For starters, pay-per-click )PPC( ads are small and are displayed on search results pages crowded with other ads and organic search listings. To make your ad stand out, every word matters and every trick of the trade you apply can take you one step closer to the sale. To help you write effective ads that are more likely to be noticed and clicked by prospective customers,

In search engine marketing )SEM( we are at the beginning of the up slope in this industry as search engine marketing continues to grow and the competition is hotting up. Despite this there are more opportunities than ever for clever )non-spammy( search engine marketers said Search Engine Land executive editor Chris Sherman as he opened SMX Advanced London today.

On the 16 th and 17 th of May we wont be in our office but somewhere between the well-heeled London neighbourhoods of South Kensington and Chelsea. Obviously we wont be shopping nor lunching and not even sunbathing in nearby Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens. No, we will be clutching laptops instead of IT bags to bring you the latest from a search marketing conference designed exclusively for experienced internet marketers. Fluent in search engine marketing?

If you live in the DC area and count yourself among those who draw inspiration from the nations top entrepreneurs, you wont want to miss the 48th Annual National Small Business Week gathering. The registration deadline is tomorrow, May 13th, so if you plan on going and havent registered yet, nows the time! If you cant make it in person to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in DC, you can attend virtually through the U.S. Small Business Administrations free,