adCenter versus AdWords

The true test of any company, product or service is in their Christmas message right? (I’m joking).

So let’s consider how Microsoft adCenter and Google AdWords stack up against each other. I spend a fair bit of money with each, so it’s reasonable to expect something useful in the Inbox at Christmas time.

Microsoft AdCenter

First up, Microsoft adCenter. Here’s the message I received a few days ago:

Cool, perhaps there’s a voucher or discount coupon waiting for me. I click the button and am taken to this page:

After a good 20-30 seconds of loading, I finally experience this delight:

Lame. But it gets lamer. Shaking the globe (wow – it’s interactive! – all designed in Flash of course) unleashes this tosh:

Followed by:

The wankery continues with:

And concludes with this masterful ‘Spread the Cheer’ call to action:

No voucher of course! No actual benefit. No actual gift. Instead a waste of my bandwidth and time. What’s really tragic is that some galah in marketing was paid to spend time and money getting this rubbish prepared.

Google AdWords

Moving on to Google now, and here’s the email I received (at the address I use with AdWords):

Clicking on  the link takes me here:

Yes, that’s right. It loads in a second and tells me they’re donating $20M to a range of charities.

Enough said.

Kinda related posts:

1. Microsoft advertising spend: $1.2B
2. CodePlex.org versus CodePlex.com
3. TIP: Repairing Outlook .ost and .pst files