Redmond, Washington — Microsoft is simplifying it for companies effectively using its advertising platform to check how Bing is displaying their advertisements. So, if you have set up your ad campaign for Bing in adCenter and now you wish to know whether or not the ads are showing. Now, the adCenter team has introduced a new feature called Ad Preview, which allows advertisers to check their ads without artificially padding the impression and click data.
The Redmond-based company said that its adCenter team has added this feature at the request from advertisers.
Starting from September 20th, 2009, companies that are also adCenter advertisers will be able to reap the benefits of the latest Ad Preview Tool in order to preview their ads in Bing.
“We have developed Ad Preview, a new feature that can help you confirm that your search ad is appearing. Instead of searching on Bing.com for your live ad, you can access Ad Preview directly in adCenter while you are managing your campaigns. Ad Preview also helps avoid the unnecessary impressions and accidental clicks you might incur when you search for your ad on Bing,” revealed Carolyn Miller, from the adCenter Community Team.
Whether businesses only wish to make sure if their ads are being displayed in Bing, or whether they will want to find out that certain keywords are indeed correctly associated with the advertisements, the Ad Preview Tool is the way to go.
In order to access the Ad Preview Tool, users need only sign into Microsoft adCenter and make their way to the Campaigns tab, where they will find the Ad Preview Tool in the upper right hand side corner. Simply enter keywords into the search box and click the Preview Ads button. The best thing about the Ad Preview Tool as opposite to using Bing itself is that there is no danger of the users clicking on any links. All ads will be un-clickable for searches performed in Ad Preview.
“Ad Preview allows you to preview your ads without affecting impressions or CTR. Impressions delivered through Ad Preview will not appear as impressions in your account performance,” Miller noted, indicating that the tool is currently tailored to the average searcher.
If you discover that your ads are appearing in Ad Preview but not in a regular search, then remember that you might have set demographic and/or geographic targets that you yourself do not meet. Also, you may be outbid at the time you check an ad on the regular search. Ad Preview, however, does not currently support a geographic or demographic preview, but we are working on it and hope to release it soon.