Today a booklet showed up from Microsoft to help me “get the most out of adCenter.” Cool spelling and a dude with way too much hair product are in evidence. Not a good sign.

Let me explain…..

I actually hate buying ads - any kind. I much prefer more organic methods, but Microsoft (motto: We are better than Google! Come back here, we are so too!) had some deal where you bought $5 worth of advertising and they chip in $50 additional. I am cheap cheap cheap and five bucks ain’t so much, so I signed up.

I think John Chow (my hero!) made a buck off the transaction, so the internet can keep spinning.

So there I was with $55 burning a hole in my pocket and an actual documentation manual from Microsoft. (Side note: when was the last time you saw printed documentation from Microsoft? DOS 2.11?)

First a piece of paper “contact list” falls out with URL’s very prettily printed on it. Paper. Am I supposed to pin that to my cubicle or something? Could they not just send it to me so I could put it in my Outlook?

Next a letter telling me that they’ve sent me this book and the contact information pinup. At least it doesn’t say “MEMORANDUM” across the top.

The book itself would actually be a good primer for someone who has never written an ad before, so mad props to them for realizing that their audience is varied. They talk about mis-spelled keywords, the importance of bolding text, being specific, all that good stuff. They even talk about geo-location.

I give them a B+ for helping new buyers of ads with a pretty clearly written document. I’d have been happier to have been able to check a box NOT to receive this, but in retrospect it probably increased my opinion of Microsoft’s ability to look at the basics and get the right information out.

If Microsoft were able to get this to the 90K or so Yahoo!Store owners, or the 250K people with GoDaddy e-commerce sites, I bet they could sell some ads. Because their stuff has around 50% the functionality of google’s confusing mess, but it’s the 50% you need if you are selling in those arena’s. And once those guys can put in $25 and drop $50 to the bottom line, it will take a bazooka to get them to move.

In fact, the more I thought about the MS value proposition, the better I liked it. So I decided I wanted to send it to a friend who has a small online business with no advertising, so I went to the Microsoft adCenter website and … it is not available in PDF.