Review: adCenter Desktop Editor– Spring 2009 Update

If you’ve ever spent time managing a paid search campaign, you probably know how frustrating and time consuming it can be to accomplish even the most basic of tasks. Updating bids, ad copy or destination urls through web interfaces can take a lot of time — even if you have a small to medium sized campaign. Thankfully, two of the major paid search players, Google and Microsoft, have created applications that help to speed-up this process. Today I will be taking a look at the latest version of the adCenter Desktop Editor from Microsoft, and highlighting a few things that have been improved as well as others that still need work.

The paid search team at Oneupweb have been using the adCenter Desktop tool since it was first released last year. Early versions were buggy, and would often crash without warning. The latest version, released earlier this month, fixed a number of these early bugs and improved overall performance of the application in terms of speed and stability. Uploading and downloading account changes now takes less time than before, and the cap on the amount of changes you can make at one time has been increased.

While the bug fixes and new features included in the latest version of adCenter Desktop are welcomed, there are still some remaining issues that need to be addressed before considering the tool a replacement for the adCenter web interface. One of the most frustrating design flaws that I have found is trying to pause or resume individual keyword match types. Pausing and resuming keywords is one of the most basic tasks that occur when managing pay-per-click campaigns. Unfortunately, adCenter Desktop does not allow you to pause individual phrase and exact match variations of a keyword. If you try to pause one or the other, the program automatically assumes you want to pause both. The only way to complete this task involves logging into the adCenter web interface to add or remove the desired match type.

Stand-alone applications to manage paid search campaigns have come a long way since they were first introduced, and they continue to add features that help make managing easier and faster than working through web interfaces. As it stands, Google AdWords Editor is the gold-standard for these types of programs. Microsoft has been playing catch-up with adCenter Desktop while Yahoo STILL offers no type of account management application.

Tools or no tools, there is no substitute for experience when it comes to managing pay-per-click campaigns. The Oneupweb paid search team knows the ins and outs of every engine, and knows how to best utilize them to grow your business.