What is adCenter?

Microsoft adCenter is a robust collection of tools and information that you can use to place advertisements for your business on the Web. You can use adCenter to create and edit your online campaigns; research keywords and demographics related to your target market; and create and run regular reports to help refine your online campaign performance.

Ads that you create with adCenter can appear on Live Search results pages, or on MSN-affiliated websites with related content. The placement and ranking of your ads online are determined by several factors, including search keywords entered by the user and the type of content displayed on participating websites.

Getting around in adCenter

Microsoft adCenter is organized into several sections to better help you manage and optimize your online advertising:

Campaign Management – Create ads; enter, import, and edit keywords; start and pause ad campaigns.
Accounts & Billing – Create and manage accounts, and view billing invoices and monthly charges.
Research – Investigate keyword statistics and demographics.
Reports – View detailed reports about your advertising campaigns.

How does adCenter work?

To create an ad campaign, you first write the ads you want to display. You can then select and bid for keywords to associate with your ads. See About building your first campaign for more details.

Your ads can appear with Live Search search results or on MSN-affiliated webpages. In Live Search results, ads appear based on a combination of factors including the relevance of search keywords and the bid price for each keyword. Ads may be displayed on MSN-affiliated webpages based on the relevance of the webpage and other variables. You can also choose to target your ads to customers based on certain demographic information, using exclusive or incremental targeting. See the Building campaigns FAQ for more information.

You are only charged when someone clicks your ads. This is known as the cost-per-click (CPC) billing method. The amount that you pay for each click is calculated based on the base amount you bid for each ad or keyword, your budget limits, and any incremental bidding based on target demographics. See About bidding for more information.

Optimizing your ad performance

To help the ads in your campaigns perform as well as possible, you can generate robust reports that show you potential areas of optimization, research keyword performance and demographics, and test new keywords to determine their effectiveness. See the Optimizing campaigns FAQ for more information.