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New tools: Meaningful connections on the Microsoft Audience Network

Advertisers in the United States now have a collection of new tools to maximize reach and results in the Microsoft Audience Network, our programmatic native ads platform. The Microsoft Audience Network connects you to millions of people across devices via high-quality, brand-safe native ad placements, including Microsoft Edge, Outlook.com, MSN, and select partners.

Through our network, you can meaningfully identify and engage with your target audience using our full audience targeting library: including Microsoft’s unique understanding of what products and services our users are ready to buy as well as LinkedIn Profile Targeting. And you don’t need to run a test campaign to explore our robust targeting capabilities. The new Audience Network Planner is now available to help you research the right targeting, budgets, and bids to maximize your results in the Microsoft Audience Network — no campaign required. Based on your targeting selection, the planner will calculate for you a reach estimate, bid & budget suggestions, and provide additional detail about your audience’s composition on our network. And that’s not all: enter different budget and bid values to explore how they affect estimated impressions, clicks, CPC, and more. Once you’re ready to create your campaign, you can apply your settings directly into a new campaign from within the Audience Network Planner.

Product view of the Audience Network Planner interface.

A view of the Audience Network Planner.

Setting up ads for your new audience campaign is also straightforward. Audience ads are responsive and adapt to the native design and style of the website that your ads appear in. To have the best results, we recommend starting with an image that is 1200x628 pixels or larger. To help you find the right images for your target audience, we’ve partnered with Shutterstock to give you free access to over 320 million high-quality, advertising-ready images for use in Microsoft Advertising.

Product view of the stock photos interface.

You can use free stock photos from Shutterstock in your ads.

In addition to image ads, the Microsoft Audience Network is also available for retailers who prefer to advertise directly with a product feed. Similar to shopping campaigns on our search network, you can now create an audience campaign using a Microsoft Merchant Center store catalog. This will enable you to deliver product ads at scale in the Microsoft Audience Network.

Example of a product ad.

An example of a product ad.

With an audience campaign, advertisers with a product feed now have a powerful, new remarketing tool: dynamic remarketing. For the first time on our platform, dynamic remarketing enables advertisers to show personalized ads based on the specific products that your target audience has previously interacted with. You can create five types of dynamic remarketing lists — general visitors, product searchers, product viewers, shopping cart abandoners, and past buyers — so you don't need to create a remarketing list for each individual product.

Another way to quickly get started with the Microsoft Audience Network, is to import your Google Display campaigns and your Google Responsive Display Ads. This can be a quick way to import ads, bids, and budgets that already work for your target audience.
 

The Microsoft Audience Network is a very efficient way to add scale and it performs.

— Trevor Hettesheimer, Manager of KPI and analytics, search and planning, Volvo Cars USA


Audience campaigns are the best way to get the most out of the Microsoft Audience Network. Volvo allocated a sizeable amount of advertising spend towards the all-new S60 sedan launch in 2018, so they leveraged the Microsoft Audience Network as a cost-effective strategy to support awareness and maintain sales of their best-seller, the XC90 luxury SUV. With audience campaigns, Volvo leveraged in-market audiences, remarketing, gender, and LinkedIn profile targeting to drive 65,000 incremental site visitors at a lower CPC than average paid search. Volvo’s remarketing audience saw an 83% increase in clicks after starting on the Microsoft Audience Network.

Audience Network Planner, audience campaigns, dynamic remarketing, stock photos for audience ads, and more are available now to all advertisers in the United States.

Audience campaigns are coming soon to advertisers in the United Kingdom. Interested? To join the preview, please contact your Microsoft Advertising account manager.

We are always listening to help you deliver your best results on the Microsoft Audience Network. For any questions about getting started with Audience Ads, please reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account manager or contact support. You can also ping us on Twitter, suggest a feature on the Microsoft Advertising Feature Suggestions Forum, or send an email to advertising-feedback@microsoft.com.

Examples of Microsoft Advertising ads on the Microsoft Audience Network.