Adcenter Desktop Beta

At last we have our hands on the new AdCenter Desktop Beta!

At first glance the interface looks surprisingly (and refreshingly) different to AdWords Editor. The navigational elements are very similar to those found in Office 2007. At the top of the application you'll find the "ribbon" which is grouped into three main tabs called Home, Manage and Research.

The home tab features panels for uploading and downloading data plus a handy "preview" tab that totals the number of changes you made since downloading your data. This feature also allows you to quickly check your ads for potential editorial issues before uploading.

The export function allows you to export your account in AdCenter format, a 3^rd Party format, as HTML or as an adCenter archive (acea). What would have been fab would be a direct export to Ms Word (if you want to spell check an entire account export as a HTML file, open in IE and then choose the File > Edit with Word option).

I guess the most eagerly awaited feature would be the import function. It's not unfair to say that most ad agencies would want to manage their accounts in Google and then port across to adCenter. Maybe the adcenter desktop is good enough to switch that around but for now a seamless import from AdWords Editor would be a boon. I'll confess that this is the first thing I tried when I got the desktop and importing direct from an AdWords Editor export didn't work for me but I've not had much time to play yet.

Next along the ribbon are the stats options allowing you to view stats for a series of preset time ranges and although changing the setting does prompt another download it worked pretty quickly.