Bing Shopping Releases Merchant Self Service Portal

Posted by on November 16, 2010 in Uncategorized

Bing Shopping recently released a new Merchant Self Service Portal linked to Microsoft’s adCenter. The move is an attempt to make Bing Shopping onboarding easier for merchants and at the same time plans to put all merchants that use the free shopping engine in front of Microsoft’s paid search programs. The portal gives merchants new capabilities such as seamless onboarding and data feed optimization reports.

Merchants new to Bing Shopping should now create an adCenter account here and start their own Bing Shopping account.

The Portal:

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When you click on the Tools tab from your adCenter login, you’ll notice a new Management Tool item titled “Bing Shopping Account Management.”

From here you can set up a new account or transfer your existing Bing Shopping Merchant Center account to adCenter.

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Once you enter basic store information, you’ll be able to maneuver within the skeleton of your account.  Store Settings, Catalog Management, and FTP Settings tabs make up the new Bing Shopping API.

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Here you can upload a data feed to your account, or you can request that Microsoft pull it from a unique URL.

If you choose to upload, you will then be asked to create FTP credentials to submit your data feed.

Traditional onboarding to the old Bing Shopping Merchant Center is paused until December first.  We recommend all merchants new to Bing Shopping or currently in the Bing Shopping Merchant Center to migrate to the new adCenter API.

Optimization Reports:

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Now merchants can get instant feedback on data feeds submitted to Bing Shopping.

The feed report goes into detail and describes your data quality.  In this case, “Product URL” was interpreted as “ProductUrl,” which flagged an error for six products in the data feed (there should be no spaces in header titles).  The feedback lets you to troubleshoot your own feeds with ease.

Merchants:

If you’re new to Bing Shopping you should now create an adCenter account here to access the free Bing Shopping Self Service Portal.

If you’re new to Bing Shopping but already have an adCenter account, you can launch your products on Bing Shopping with that login.

If you already have a Bing Shopping Merchant Center account you can create or use an existing adCenter account to transfer the Merchant Center account to the new adCenter account at the same place.

The first wave of merchants that transfer to the new shopping portal in Microsoft’s adCenter should be activated by December 1, but typical wait times are two weeks.

Source

Useful Links:

Microsoft adCenter

Bing Shopping Forum

Bing Shopping Merchant Best Practices

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  • April

    Hey there,

    A quick question, if I haven’t signed up for the paid ads program, I don’t get to use the adCenter account, correct?

    Thanks!

  • Jason

    When you sign up for an adCenter account Microsoft requires a credit card. This does not mean it is charging you for any services. The adCenter account is now the portal for Bing Shopping as well, so creating an account through adcenter.microsoft.com gives you access to Microsoft’s paid search programs and the free self-service Bing Shopping portal.

  • http://www.snapitdigital.com ben

    if i have a url for googlebase will it also work for bing shopping?? if not whots the best ftp cleint to sign up.

    ben@snapitdigital.com

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewparkerdavis CPC_Andrew

    Hi Ben,

    Thanks for the comment. I just sent you an e-mail.

    Andrew