Bing Ads bans ads from third-party tech support services

Citing "serious quality issues", Microsoft updates the Bing Ads global ad policy to disallow all ads from third-party tech support providers.

Microsoft’s Bing Ads has announced it will no longer accept advertising from third-party tech support companies. The change to the company’s ad policies affects all markets where Bing Ads is available.

In a blog post, Liz Walsh, demand quality project manager for Bing Ads, said,

“This policy change reflects Microsoft’s commitment to lead the industry in providing a safer experience for all of our end users, including populations most vulnerable to online scams and other fraud activities.”

Earlier this month, Bing reported it had blocked more than 15 million ads and 25,000 sites for third-party tech support scams — more than any other group of bad actors. The ads are often written to look like they are from the tech companies themselves. With the objective of getting consumers to call for support, a typical scam involves the call representative claiming to represent the tech company the consumer wants support from and then convinces the caller that his computer is infected with malware, scaring him into paying exorbitant fees to fix a non-existent problem.

The new Bing policy states that “Advertisers may not promote online technical support to consumers for products or services that the advertisers do not directly own.” And “Advertisers must not claim to provide a service that can only be provided by the actual owner of the products or service advertised.”

In 2014, the US ordered six international tech support scam operators were to pay more than $5.1 million in fines. At that time, Search Engine Land looked at the state of tech support ads on Google and Bing  and found that despite crackdowns, tech support ads in search were still cause for consumer confusion.

Google has not banned ads from third-party tech support firms outright, but it is much harder to find them today. Search Engine Land did find ads displaying on a search for “outlook support” on both desktop and mobile.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/bing-bans-third-party-tech-support-ads-249356

Copy & paste comes to Bing Ads UI

Easily add keywords and ads to new ad groups from the web interface.

Bing Ads has rolled out a handy update, bringing the ability to copy and paste keywords and ads within the web interface.

You’ll now be able to add keywords and ads to new campaigns and ad groups without having to either use Bing Ads Editor or enter everything in manually in the UI. Just as in Google AdWords, there are now new copy and past options under the “Edit” tab on the Campaigns tab. Control+C and Control+V also work.

Once you copy the ads or keywords you want to add, just navigate to the ad group where you want to include them and paste. You can opt to pause them once added and choose whether to include the keyword bids and destination URLs.

Source:http://searchengineland.com/copy-paste-comes-bing-ads-ui-249237

Bing Ads makes it easier to segment performance data like time of day and device

The feature is now live in all accounts

Performance analysis in Bing Ads just got easier with the addition of a new Segment tab in the campaigns page.

You can segment your campaign data by time (of day, day of week, and even by month, quarter or year), network, device and top vs. other from the main interface, rather than having to navigate to the Reports section.

To download segmented campaign data, you’ll need to select the option you want from the Download report window (just like in AdWords).

Note that if you’re looking to see segmentation by time, there are some limits. For example, if you select “Day,” the maximum data range you can look at is 16 days.

The feature is now available to all accounts. (Originally, this article stated it was only available in the US and UK.)


Source: http://searchengineland.com/bing-ads-segmentation-data-248788

Pull Google Maps traffic data into AdWords with this script library

Columnist Russell Savage shows how you can use the Google Maps Distance Matrix API to get traffic data and use this information to customize your paid search ads.

San Francisco is the third-worst city in the United States for traffic congestion, according to a study by the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard. Commuters in San Francisco spend an extra 78 hours a year delayed in traffic, and as far as I can tell, it won’t be getting better any time soon.

Now that traffic information is so easy to access from any smartphone, your customers are likely checking and changing their behavior because of it. And when your customers change their behavior, you should be able to react.

Today, I’m happy to share a library I wrote to access Google Maps traffic data to determine commute times. By entering an origin, destination and departure time, you can quickly see how long a normal drive takes and how long the drive takes with traffic. Using that data, you can change your bids and Ad schedules or enable a set of Ads targeted directly toward those commuters.

Please note that I’m not advocating for you to advertise to commuters while they’re driving, but folks definitely use their phones while on public transport and as passengers in carpools and taxis. Additionally, people who deal with onerous commutes might have special needs, and you can use your ad creative at any hour to show you are aware of and feel their pain.

Introducing the Google Maps Distance Matrix API

Google Maps traffic information is available via the Distance Matrix API, and to access it, the only thing you need to do is to get a developer key from Google. You can call the service up to 2,500 times in a 24-hour period for free, which should be fine for most advertisers. (For all the details about quotas and the rate for additional calls, check out the usage limits page.)

Follow the instructions on the Google help page to generate a server key to use with this library. You can keep all the defaults, since the only thing that really matters is the final 40-character key. That’s what we will be using to call the library.

Don’t worry, I know a shortcut

Now that we have the server key, let’s take a look at the library I put together to access the API. As always, I’ll explain and give an example of how to use the code below.

 The library is designed to work with all the parameters described in the documentation of the Distance Matrix API using the exact same names. The only required parameters are the key, the list of origins and the list of destinations, but if you want to get traffic estimates, you also need to pass in departure_time as per the documentation.

Keep in mind that you can add multiple origins or destinations, and Google will calculate the distances between each (hence the word “matrix” in the title). This is a good way to save on API calls. You can get the duration and the duration in traffic for any of the origins and destinations by using their index from the getOrigins and getDestinations function. Here’s an example of how to set up and use the library.

Accessing the Matrix

Here we are using multiple locations and accessing the results of Los Angeles, CA, to Palo Alto, CA, by passing in 1, 1 to the functions. If we wanted Los Angeles to Truckee, we would pass in 1, 0. Of course, if you are only passing in a single origin and destination, you can ignore those indices altogether, since they default to 0, 0. There is additional documentation in the library for each of the public functions.

Assuming you passed in a departure time, your response should have a duration and a duration in traffic, each with its own value. The difference between these two values indicates how delayed your customer is going to be on their way to or from their location.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/pull-google-maps-traffic-data-into-adwords-with-this-script-library-248934

AdWords Editor update: Frequency caps, review extensions, display app install campaigns

The latest update of AdWords Editor includes new capabilities for app marketers and a couple of goodies for everyone else.

Display app install campaigns are now available in Editor. You can create and edit a mobile app install campaign for Display from Editor.

App extensions are now available from the Shared Library in Editor and can be added and linked to text ads. App extensions can link to apps available in Google Play or the Apple App Store.

Review extensions — quotes or paraphrases of reviews from well-regarded organizations — are also available in the Shared Library in the latest Editor version.

And finally, Frequency capping is now a setting option for Display and Video campaigns in Editor. No more setting up a Display campaign in Editor and having to remember to go back into the UI to update this key setting. The Frequency capping setting is located under the setting for Enhanced CPC in the Campaign settings section. Clicking on “Edit” will bring up a window to enter impression caps for either campaign type. Display impression caps can be set at the campaign, ad group or ad level. Note that you may have to drag to expand this window to see all the options.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/adwords-editor-update-frequency-capping-display-app-install-campaigns-248733