Bing Ads Editor = Annoying

Sometimes I forget why I try not to use Microsoft products. Like an abused housewife, I try to tell myself that they aren’t so bad any more – they’ve changed. They aren’t going to scar me with horrid products like IE6 these days. Deep down, they actually love me. They were drunk. They didn’t mean it.

And then, when I’m least expecting it, SLAM goes the front door, in comes the proverbial smell of booze, and before I know it they are forcing their shitty products down my throat while I’m begging for it all to be over so I can just get back to work.

Yep, today was one of those days.

One of the clients I inherited had been running Mongoose Metrics in the past on their Google AdWords and Bing Ads programs to track calls, but ended up discontinuing its use. The old tracking parameters had been left on all the destination URLs within the campaigns, but Webmaster Tools revealed that several 404 errors had been appearing for site visitors that had gone through those URLs.

So, pretty easy fix, right? All I needed to do was go into AdWords editor and Bing Ads editor, make the changes in bulk, and I’d be done in less than 15 minutes.

More specifically, my plan was just to go to the ads tab, sort by destination URL, select all the ads using the same URL, and delete the parameter, which looked something like:

?mm_campaign=7cc1fb2fc1f6d1765ddfd5a232db6546&keyword={keyword}&match=PPC&engine=omnippc&utm_source=…. and so on

So I fired up my trusty AdWords editor, did what I needed to do, and uploaded the changes. Piece of cake!

Now at this point, I hadn’t actually loaded Bing Ads Editor onto my new work computer yet, so I went to the site and downloaded the install file.

Here’s when I began to become irritated.

The installer gets stuck at 75%… it’s now 11:45, I’m trying to leave for lunch… ok fine. I’ll wait.

5 minutes go by, so I decide to cancel the download and try again.

I get an error on cancel, saying that the program is already downloading.

Ok…? I cancel, and lo and behold, Bing Ads Editor 9.2 appears on my desktop. WTF? Ok… Maybe I did something wrong?

I try to open it, and it just sits there, thinking (keep in mind our work computers are also Dells…)

10 more minutes roll by. Arrghh.. Frustrated I go to lunch.

I come back and… it has finally loaded. Hurray! I load the account (which takes considerably longer than AdWords editor BTW), go to the Text ads tab, and sort by destination URL.

All of a sudden, the “Edit the Selected Text Ads” screen pops up, covering the rows I am trying to select. WTF?? I minimize it so I can actually see what I’m doing. I click on the first ad again, and it does it again. WT-Friggin-F???