From the archive. Written in 2007, when this site ran on Rails. Links may have drifted.
At the risk of being called a keyword Nazi and having to endure accusations that I care just a little too much about this stuff: Microsoft just managed surpass my experience with Yahoo.
As I mentioned, I've been advertising my online community classifieds site, Dibs.net, on Google for almost a month. Last night I decided to try out Microsoft's advertising network for my community classifieds site. I copied some of my better performing ads from my Classifieds Ad Group on Google into my Classifieds Ad Group on Microsoft.
Here's representative ad from the bunch:
I was in business fairly quickly -- or so I thought. Microsoft has a similar "editorial guidelines" process to Yahoo's. But at Microsoft, the process must go something like this:
- Take break from huffing paint fumes and watching Scooby-Doo
- Flip coin
- Heads, you get to advertise with your keyword; tails, you don't
Microsoft rejected what I consider to the the most important keywords from my advertising, including "classifieds" and "community classifieds."
I've given them a chance to respond before I start calling them names here ;)
(PS - Google's success in advertising appears to be not without reason.)
Update: Microsoft took only a few hours to respond, and did so positively by reinstating the classifieds-related keywords. Good for them (and me). They blamed the problem on their automated editorial process, which raises the question: why would anyone automate such a thing? I think we can all agree computers are great at some things, but applying subjective and vaguely defined editorial guidelines isn't one of them. Either way, I take back my paint fumes and Scooby-Doo comment above, since it appears they aren't nuts after all.