I’m going, someday, to write about a web site or business that I like… I promise. In the meantime, here’s another nutty bit of Microsoft activity. In September, the Bing and Yahoo search network will merge in the UK. While you can now do some activity on those networks and generate some business, because neither is more than about 1/6th of Google AdWords search traffic, it is hard to justify spending much time to optimise. With smaller auctions the price was generally lower, also meaning it was easy to just set up and run – no serious optimisation required.
When the networks merge, the combined total should probably be about 20-25% of the AdWords total. Now that’s of a size to start getting properly interested in optimisation, and one can justify some management time to organising and sorting it out.
Because we’re anticipating increasing client spend on the enlarged network, we’re looking at what techniques we can use to optimise. That’s what we do… optimise stuff, after digging into it. So I wanted to comment on something that I thought would be useful to do, in the larger network. I went to the Microsoft adCenter user discussion forum to contribute. And I got this, when I tried to submit a comment:
Microsoft adCenter discussion forum requires MSIE, through non-display of CAPTCHA on non-MSIE browsers.
Microsoft is making use of their advertising platform pretty difficult. Firstly, I don’t like this whole “you must use MSIE to get the experience”. That’s so 1997. These days, there are browsers that offer very usable interfaces. Oh look, I’m using three of them now – Chrome, FireFox and Safari. It’s not as if Microsoft even said “MSIE9 is so far ahead that we’re making that the standard” (because that’d be a pretty stupid thing to say, anyway), because MSIE8 *can* be used – and that’s certainly no more advanced than any of the other major browsers.
Nope, Microsoft have made de-facto that to effectively use their web interface for their advertising system, you have to run their operating system and their browser. It’s so… retro non-chic. It’s a marketing approach out of some 1970′s vendor lockin agenda.
Anyway, the point of frustration was passed today, when I realised that not only do I have to use a Windows system to interact with the advertising platform, I also have to use a Windows system to interact with the community forum. It didn’t use to be that way. A year or so ago, I could post message. Now, though, I have to complete a CAPTCHA – which, regrettably, is not visible on Chrome, Safari or Firefox, and has no recommendation as to the plugin I need to adopt. Nope, if I use a non-Windows system with a non-MS browser, they just don’t care to hear from me.
With no CAPTCHA form visible, how do I submit the form with a CAPTCHA? That’s just a design and test fail.
And there’s another thing…
If I’ve just typed a comment to your blogging platform, couldn’t you had the courtesy to let me know that I needed to be running MSIE *before* I start writing? I mean you do *know* that your “community” now requires MSIE to be used before a comment can be added? In my case, that means usurping a Windows machine used for compatibility testing and adCenter operations, so I can contribute to a discussion. I don’t feel that generous to Microsoft. I have better things to do with my time than switch machines, in order to post a comment in a discussion thread.
But that’s not even the serious thing…
If I’ve just spent five minutes typing in a reply on the forum, Microsoft knows quite a bit about me. Potential details include stuff like the pacing of characters, the previous activity of the Microsoft authentication service by that ID, the IP address, possibly backtracking the IP address, and details of the packets to indicate the type of operating system I’m using, all those browser header details, and various other clues that I’m probably a human. So if you can’t tell from my logging in and all that typing, that I’m human – how the hell are you going to tell from a single click that my advert clicking is or is not fraudulent?
How about it Microsoft? Can you actually detect bad clicks at all, or do you just guess that some percentage are bad? The amount of spend we’ve done on behalf of clients, and the ROI, has never meant that it is worth checking the adCenter fraud detection system. I think I’m getting interested now.
And why can’t Microsoft make its discussion and feedback systems accessible to other browsers, like any other competent technical organisation? What makes Microsoft so technologically incapable that a *discussion* forum requires a technology limitation on the platform used for access? This is just so primitive. I am *so* glad that I decided my organisation would not be using Windows as a standard operating platform. This level of lockin is just tedious obstructivism. At least have the courtesy to tell me when I log in that “some features of this discussion, such as replying to comments, are not possible unless you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 or 9″? Then I won’t waste my time trying to engage.
Microsoft has not convinced me of the Windows Advantage. It has convinced me that they are technologically primitive, and that using Windows systems would be a technological backwater. That’s the complete reverse of what they probably thought they were doing when they made this design decision. The signal I get is “if you use Microsoft products, you’re locked in, unable to choose what is best for your business, and we don’t care at all”. That’s not a good message to people who aren’t using Windows now. It is not going to convince us that using WIndows is a good idea. Forcing users to do something is weaker for branding, than exciting them.
