Just yesterday I was approved for the beta version of the new Microsoft Adcenter Desktop, which allows you to managed your entire Adcenter account offline!

This program is the equivalent of Adwords Editor, a tool that I consider absolutely essential to building and optimizing my campaigns.

Check it out…

This program opens up a whole new world, enabling me to significantly improve the performance of my MSN campaigns. For Adwords I use the Editor to do all my bid optimizations based on conversion data and specific rules I set. The Editor allows me to change bids at the keywords level for 10,000s of keywords instantly.

Now I can do the same with Adcenter.

Well, not just yet, there’s a few limitations in this beta version :

1. The download stats feature doesn’t work yet, at all.
2. With Adwords Editor there’s a filter feature that allows you to filter your view based on campaign name, adgroup name, conversions, clicks, etc, etc. Adcenter Desktop does not have that feature yet. Which is a BIG limitation if you’re managing a large account like I am.
3. There’s no Advanced Bid Change Feature, where you can adjust the bids on a set of keywords or adgroups up or down by a certain percentage.

Microsoft managed to included most of the other features that make Adwords Editor such a powerful tool, including the ability to create and modify multiple adgroups, keywords, and ads at once :

There’s also some very cool totally unique features that MSN Adcenter Desktop has:

Keyword Bid Estimation : You can estimate how much it costs to be in position #1 for your keywords :

Now you can set your initial keyword bids based on these numbers. For MSN it’s actually worth shooting for the top position (for most markets), so you could even make the bet estimate you starting bids.

Keywords Expansion : This is an AWESOME feature that allows you to added additional keywords (long tails and variations) directly into specific adgroups:

Now it’s time for Yahoo to produce a Desktop app like this, it’s LOOONG overdue!