Welcome to the November edition of the Microsoft Advertising product roundup! The holiday season is just around the corner for many, and at Microsoft Advertising, we’re also getting ready for the launch of Netflix’s ad-supported tier as well as the world’s biggest soccer event.
Onto our product updates for this month:
This month’s top story: Credit card ads now globally available to advertisers
It’s no secret that Microsoft Advertising has been hard at work testing new ad types that are specific to the unique advertising needs of different industries or verticals. Currently, we’re piloting Vertical Ads in a variety of areas. We launched Automotive Ads in August, and we’re excited to share that Credit card ads are now available to advertisers globally!
If you’re not already, we highly recommend considering vertical experiences, a vital component for engaging with consumers and maintaining or increasing ad performance. Instead of using a generic ad approach, try Vertical Ads specific to your industry. Learn more here.
Performance Max Import solution
As mentioned last month, Microsoft Advertising has built a solution within Google Import to simplify duplicating your efforts across platforms when using Google Ads’ Performance Max campaigns. This is now generally available and allows you to import your Performance Max campaigns as Smart Shopping Campaigns and Local Inventory Ads in Microsoft (for those with a Merchant Center) and Dynamic Search Ads (for those without a Merchant Center). We just published a blog about this, so make sure you get all the details and best practices of Performance Max Import there and reach out for questions.
New conversion setup wizard with no coding required
We’re delighted to share that you can now easily and intelligently set up your custom conversion tracking via Microsoft Clarity. By having Microsoft Clarity insights for Microsoft Advertising enabled within your Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag setup, you can now set up sophisticated conversion tracking by event, measure performance, and drive a stronger ROI with almost no effort.
This is now in open beta for advertisers. Connect with your account team today or contact support to get started!
New UET tag dashboard to view key reports
In addition to the new setup wizard, there’s also a new UET tag dashboard which can help you monitor tag data and fix any issues that arise. This is a one-stop shop for all things UET, including real-time insights into the data that gets sent via UET tags and troubleshooting action recommendations.
Responsive Search Ads recommendations now available through the API
To help advertisers better prepare for the February 1 deadline for migrating from Expanded Text Ads to Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), you can now upload RSA recommendations to your accounts with the bulk API. This solution is key to help migrate top-performing content to RSAs and ensure all ad groups have RSA before February. Check out this API article with more detail.
New partnership with PrestaShop
In addition to all the other integrations we’ve announced in recent months, we have a new exciting one to share in PrestaShop. PrestaShop merchants can now connect natively to the Microsoft Advertising platform module within the PrestaShop experience. The Microsoft Ads & Listings module is available for download in the PrestaShop Addons Marketplace and the Module Catalog section of PrestaShop merchants' Back Office across the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Translation and availability will soon expand to all countries, including France, Italy, Germany, and more!
Merchant Center store Import
Retailers active on Google will be now able to start advertising their products on Microsoft more quickly. Starting this month, merchants will be able to create a Microsoft Merchant Center store in just minutes by importing their store information from Google Merchant Center. This highly requested feature will seamlessly create a Microsoft Merchant Center store and automatically start importing products from Google Merchant Center.
Flexible aggregator partner options
For retailers working with aggregators, we’ve removed the “all-or-nothing” choice for direct retailers, and they can now choose to block only specific aggregators from paid listings (Product Ads). Now available in all Shopping Campaigns global markets!
Manage your Audience Ads with multiple assets from within Microsoft Editor
Back in September, we announced how we added support for Multimedia Ads in Microsoft Editor. Well, this is a continuation of that: Now you can now manage Audience Ads with multiple assets from within the Microsoft Editor tool.
Finally, let’s wrap up with a slew of other audience-related updates for this month’s roundup:
In-market Audiences to target soccer fans around the globe
People are getting ready for the world’s biggest soccer tournament that’s starting on November 20. With so many matches happening during work hours, the PC will be a key watching companion during this event—to watch matches, read news, work, and shop online. These are valuable audiences you can reach with Microsoft Advertising.
Using Microsoft’s Audience Intelligence signals, we have developed an easy-to-use In-market Audience specifically designed for the event, which will allow you to target high-value customers across the Microsoft Search and Audience Networks.
Apply our “Qatar 2022 football” audience to your campaigns. On search campaigns, associate these audiences to your existing top performing ad groups with “bid only” targeting and a bid boost of 20% to begin, then adjust as you evaluate performance. On your audience campaigns, add these lists in “target and bid” to your existing campaigns that use In-market Audiences, or create a separate campaign to target these sports enthusiasts!
Customer Match general availability and customer data platform integrations
Customer Match allows you to use email addresses that your customers have shared with you to re-engage with them across the Microsoft Search and Audience Networks. Using these audience features can help you to drive boosted performance, and it gives you an opportunity to target high-value customers using your first-party data.
We’re excited to share that Customer Match is now available in all Microsoft Advertising markets (excluding China). To get started with this feature, either directly upload your customer lists to Microsoft Advertising or connect your customer data platform (CDP) to import the data.
We've recently expanded the CDPs that can connect to Microsoft Advertising and have integrations with Lytics *new*, Amperity, Adobe Advertising Cloud, and Skai. For more information on how to connect your CDP to Microsoft Advertising, work with your account team or our support team.
Similar Audiences available in more markets
If you're looking to expand your reach and find new potential customers, Similar Audiences automatically find new customers for you by looking for people who are similar to those in your remarketing lists. These audiences are generated automatically by Microsoft Advertising once you have a remarketing list in place. Similar Audiences drive great performance—ads shown to Similar Audiences saw a 50% greater conversion rate (CVR) than the ads shown to non-audience targeted users.
Similar Audiences can be used in the US and Canada, and the great news is that they’re now generally available in more markets. Here’s a full list of countries that have been added for this feature:
Europe, Middle East, and Africa: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Albania, Andorra, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Chechia, Greece, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Monaco, Malta, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Sierra Leone, Türkiye, The Vatican (Holy See), Serbia, South Africa.
Asia-Pacific: Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand.
Latin America: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela.
Microsoft Audience Network CPM pricing general availability
For advertisers who run image ads on the Microsoft Audience Network, we have expanded our manual bidding options with the addition of cost per mille (CPM) pricing. With this pricing model, you specify a maximum amount you are willing to pay for 1,000 impressions. You should use this pricing model if you're already leveraging CPM bidding on other platforms, or if your goal is to boost views and impressions as a way of increasing brand awareness and reach. This pricing model is now available in all markets where the Microsoft Audience Network is available!
If CPM is not the right fit for you, you can use our manual cost per click (CPC) pricing model or choose Enhanced CPC—and watch this space for more automated bidding solutions coming soon!
That’s all for November—We’ll see you back here next month with another recap. Take care, everyone!
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