At the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York today, we are announcing the launch of the new Microsoft adCenter community Web site, www.adcentercommunity.com. Please update your links and subscriptions.

The new blog and its RSS feed are found at: 

We'll continue to post reminders here for a period of time. This blog will be moving to that new site along with blogs for adCenter end users and adCenter Analytics users. The goals for the new site include making it easier to find helpful community-based information about all adCenter products; adding some popular online community features that help you find the information you need; and providing some business features that will help us better determine the content needs of readers.

 

Contributors from the product development team, documentation team, support, and business teams will be providing content on the blog to make sure you have the information you want. Check out the site when you get a chance.

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

 

The planned maintenance for adCenter SSL Certificate has been completed and successfully tested.  Going forward, customers on Java platform no longer need to perform any certificate imports when trying to access adCenter API related HTTPS URL.  In fact, before next year, the imported certificates will need to be deleted.  Please reach out to adCenter API Support through the usual channel if you need assistance.

If you see any problems or issues with SSL certificate related items, please escalate this to Microsoft right away.

Thank you.

Microsoft adCenter API Support

 

 

 

We are upgrading the operating system in the Sandbox environment today, Saturday 03/08/2008 from 11 am to 8 pm PST. The Sandbox UI and API will have intermittent availability during this time. Apologies for the late notice.

 

Microsoft adCenter API Support

Beginning on February 14, Java users may have received an “SSLHandshakeException” when trying to connect to the API URL on HTTPS (SSL). As a short term solution, we recommended that all Java users update their local certificate repository by importing the adCenter API SSL certificate. We posted the step-by-step instructions on how to make this update on the adCenter Developer Forum. At this time, we are no longer recommending that Java users implement the short-term solution.

We are now actively researching a long-term solution for this same issue that will not require an additional coding update on your part. While investigating this issue and a long-term solution, we identified an issue that prevents Java users from building a full certificate chain back up to root CA.

We believe that we can find a solution to this issues, but will need additional time to test and verify our findings. The long-term solution will resolve any issues you are experiencing when it is released. Java users who have already implemented the short-term solution into their code, may be asked to remove the certificate when the long-term solution is released to prevent any future code from breaking. We will proactively notify you as soon as we have resolved this certificate issue. Please do not remove the recommended workaround coding update until you receive a notification from Microsoft adCenter.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced and thank you for your business.

 

The Microsoft adCenter Team

Hello!

 

We've added V5 campaign management and reporting samples written in Perl to our Microsoft adCenter API documentation on MSDN:

 

This list of V5 samples written in Perl, along with V5 samples written in C# and Java, can be found at Microsoft adCenter API Version 5 Examples.

 

We'll release V5 samples written in PHP at a later date. Thank you for your patience.

 

Walter Poupore
Lead Programming Writer
Microsoft adCenter API

 

 

The adCenter UI prepends an “http://” to the DestinationURL upon Save unless you choose Keyword destination URL in the Destination URL drop down when editing an ad.  So if you already have an “http://” in Param1 for your keyword as set via the API for example, you now have two when the ad serves,  and the link will be broken as it would look like http://http://company.com. There are workarounds through proper usage, however.

 

Here is a breakdown of the issue:

 

* Let’s say for “keyword1”, the SubstParam1 value is “http://a.com” (a perfectly valid and common usage)

 

* For Ad1, created via the API, the DestinationURL value is {Param1}&adlevelinfo=true (this is allowed, but not recommended. Should only contain {Param1})

 

* So when a user searches for “keyword1” and the ad displays, the URL would look like http://a.com&adlevelinfo=true (a valid URL)

 

* But if this ad is simply opened in the UI, then saved (making no changes at all, for example), the Ad1 DestinationURL now contains “http://{Param1}&adlevelinfo=true”

 

* When this ad now displays again, it will have the double http://, and be broken

 

Currently, this is expected behavior, and is by design.  One workaround, if you choose to use ad-level additional parameters, is to not use “http://” in the keyword SubstParam1 field, and let the browser fill one in if it’s not there. You could update via the API or the UI without problems.  This would not work if any of your destination url’s are https (secure SSL) however, because Internet Explorer, for one,  doesn’t try  https if you just type in “a.com”, but only attempts http.

 

The other option is to not make any updates via the UI once the ads are placed via the adCenter API.

 

adCenter API Support

 

Recently several adCenter API users and adCenter customers interested in future opportunities for using the API have asked for more information about future plans. Daniel Mathews, a technical evangelist for Microsoft’s Advertising Platform, has the inside track and has agreed to answer the questions that he can.  Pose your questions in this thread on the MSDN Forums http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2865895&SiteID=1 

Here is info about Daniel:

 

He is currently an evangelist for Microsoft's Advertising Platform. Daniel began his career as an Army Officer, but when he got an OER (Officer Evaluation Record) stating "brilliant, but not well suited to a structured environment" he decided to do something else. Having a talent for computers and a love of data, he shifted to Data Warehousing. After doing some really fun stuff during the dotcom boom, Daniel decided to wait out the bust at Microsoft. Hint: he loved it so much he is still here. He originally joined what was then called WebTV (later rebranded as MSNTV) as a Data Warehouse Analyst.

 

He believes data serves the business best when steering product development, streamlining operations and (when possible) pushing good ideas past bureaucracy! He has spent his career using many analytics tools (e.g. R, MS SQL Server, SAS, Omniture, Oracle, Red Brick, MySQL, Postgres, CART) building many decision support systems – all in many different roles (analyst, product manager, program manager, project manager). In his role as Evangelist, he’s taken an interest in how to best use APIs to enhance Microsoft Advertising products. Daniel lives in Silicon Valley with his wife, cat and dog.

 

He'll be happy to answer questions on the topics: "Direction of the Advertising APIs at Microsoft" or "Analytics in Advertising"

 

 

So here’s the plan: Post your questions for Daniel related to the topics at hand.  Questions can be added to this thread  until Feb. 26^th.  Daniel will answer questions that he can after Feb. 26^th. If there are more questions than he can field, or questions that require some other expertise, we’ll try to find an answer, or let you know if we can’t. If someone has already posted a questions that’s important to you, vote by clicking Yes  on Was this post helpful? That will help identify the most important.

 

Thanks,

Chris Norred [MSFT]

Hello,

 

This question came up today as part of the API V5 Live Meeting: How do we set "no end date" for an ad group in v5?

 

To have no end date in effect for your ad group, do not assign an end date in the AdGroup.EndDate property when calling the AddAdGroups service operation. This will effectively set the end date to a very distant date (multiple decades away) that adCenter considers 'no end date'.

 

To set the start date for an ad group to today's date (as reflected on the adCenter API server), do not assign a start date in the AdGroup.StartDate property when calling the AddAdGroups service operation.

 

The start and end date defaults (when not specified) are documented in the AdGroup Class (V5) topic, in the Property Description section (as part of the AddAdGroups explanation).

 

Thank you.

 

Walter Poupore
Lead Programming Writer
Microsoft adCenter API

 

 

 

The new release of API V5 is a significant upgrade from V4 with improvements including added reporting features, the ability to retrieve objects by id, improvements to ease updating campaign information, improved error handling and the normalization of object model names.

 

When planning your migration to V5, please approach the project as new application development rather than minor maintenance to an existing application. We will be running V4 and V5 in parallel for 180 days, after that when V4 will be retired.

 

To help you in your migration process the adCenter team will be holding webcasts with conference calls the third Tuesday of each month, during which we can help address questions around the API.

 

• Feb 19th 1pm to 2:30pm PST
• Mar 18th 1pm to 2:30pm PST
• Apr 15th 1pm to 2:30pm PST
• May 20th 1pm to 2:30pm PST
• Jun 17th 1pm to 2:30pm PST
• Jul 15th 1pm to 2:30pm PST

In each of these Open Sessions we'll begin with a 30 minute walk-through of V5 changes. Afterward we'll open up the meeting to discussion by attendees. To join the meeting please use the following Live Meeting URL:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=P96SDC&role=attend&pw=AdCenOH

If you have questions you would like to ensure are covered in advance please email the ad platform evangelism team at Microsoft (adplate@microsoft.com) with your question and let us know what session you will be attending. We will post reminders and further details prior to each session.

 

Thanks,

The adCenter team

The Sandbox+ adCenter User Interface will experience downtime on Thursday, February 14 between 10 AM and 3 PM PST for maintenance. The Sandbox+ API resources will continue to be available during that time. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.  

 

Microsoft adCenter API Support

 

Hello!

 

We've added additional Version 5 content to the Microsoft adCenter API documentation.

 

See Microsoft adCenter API Version 5 Examples for new Java and C# samples. We've also modified the previously-released How to Create Ad Groups in C# (V5) sample. Details about this sample's change is available at What's New in the SDK for Microsoft adCenter API.

 

Continue to consult the Microsoft adCenter API Version 5 Release Notes as you plan your migration to adCenter API V5.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter Poupore
Lead Programming Writer
Microsoft adCenter API

Hello!

 

Effective with our January 22, 2008 Microsoft adCenter API documentation release to MSDN, we've moved the Java sample previously posted here to How to Create Campaigns in Java (V5), and we've moved the steps for setting up your Java client to Set Up the Java Environment for Microsoft adCenter.

 

The following V5 Java samples have also been released to MSDN: 

 

• How to Check the Status of an Ad Group in Java (V5)
• How to Create Ad Groups in Java (V5)
• How to Create Ads in Java (V5)
• How to Create Keywords in Java (V5)
• How to Submit an Ad Group for Approval in Java (V5) 

Thank you.

 

Walter Poupore
Lead Programming Writer

Microsoft adCenter API

 

 

Hello!

 

adCenter API Version 5 and Version 4 contain significant differences between the campaign management entities.

 

For example, adCenter API Version 5 contains the AdGroup and Keyword classes, while the corresponding classes in adCenter API Version 4 are AdCenterOrder and AdCenterOrderItem.

 

Learn more about the campaign management entities and differences between Version 5 and Version 4 at Microsoft adCenter Entities.

 

The differences between Version 5 and Version 4 are not merely class name changes; plan your migration as a major application rewrite.

 

Also, consult the Microsoft adCenter API Version 5 Release Notes as you prepare to migrate your applications to Version 5.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter Poupore
Lead Programming Writer

Microsoft adCenter API