MSN AdCenter Not Playing Well with Firefox

Danny had a good post over at Search Engine Watch earlier this week that talks about some of the problems Firefox users are facing when trying to use MSN's adCenter interface or conversion tracking. I'd noticed that Firefox users couldn't manage their accounts with Firefox when I signed up for my beta account a few months ago, but I didn't think much of it other than to be briefly annoyed. After all, quite a few companies and online applications are still behind the game when it comes to being Firefox compatible. That's why I have IE installed on my system as a backup. But Danny's post shares a problem that's a bit more interesting, and that creates cause for concern.

One of Danny's readers wrote in to explain that Firefox is not only a problem when trying to work on your adCenter account, but that it's also an issue if you plan to use conversion tracking for your campaigns. Apparently, whenever a Firefox user shows up to your site via adCenter and tries to make a purchase, they'll be told that the merchant is masquerading as r.microsoft.com. With roughly 10% of Internet users on Firefox, that's no small amount of customers to be creating problems for.

What's worse, though perhaps not surprising, is MSN's solution. "Tell your customers that they need to use IE6."

Uh huh...we'll all get right on that.

For a good laugh and an example of just how well MSN understands customer service and usability issues, make sure you read the full post over at Search Engine Watch. It features a pretty detailed outline of the conversation. There's also a discussion going on in the Search Engine Watch forums that's worth checking out.