Blog post
Partner Spotlight: Assembly’s story and success with Microsoft Advertising
We recently spoke with Dan Roberts at Assembly, our Performance Partner of the Year award winner in EMEA, to get his perspective on their innovative use of AI-driven advertising solutions, collaboration with Microsoft Advertising, and the strategies that have led to groundbreaking advancements in enhancing customer experiences and achieving sustainable growth. Join us as we explore the dynamic partnership between Assembly and Microsoft Advertising, the integration of AI into their operations, and the significant achievements that have set new industry standards.
Meet Dan Roberts
Hello, I’m Dan Roberts, Head of Search & Programmatic at Assembly Europe. I lead a 70-plus-person team focused on delivering agile, forward-thinking, and AI-powered solutions for our clients. Prior to joining Assembly, I served as Head of Paid Search at Wavemaker and held similar leadership roles at Dentsu and GroupM. Throughout my career, I’ve worked closely with media partners to drive the adoption of AI-led campaigns, honing a formula that balances human insight with machine learning for optimal performance.
Outside of work, I founded Search Engine Hubbub in 2016 to encourage knowledge sharing among Paid Search professionals, with the aim of improving performance across the entire industry.
About Assembly
Assembly’s mission is to find the change that fuels growth, leveraging data, talent, and “built-not-bought” technology to drive meaningful business outcomes. With a team of over 300 experts specializing in omnichannel strategies, digital brand and performance, e-commerce, data science across Europe, we can drive exceptional results for clients and create bespoke solutions fast. With a client-centric structure that can organize data at scale, define insight for maximum growth and activate quickly and accurately. By turning intricate challenges into simplified, actionable insights, we are not just serving our clients – we're setting new standards in performance marketing.
In 2024, Assembly had a transformative journey of holistic growth with AI innovation and earning multiple industry recognitions including Microsoft Performance Partners of the Year and B Corp certification.
Success with Microsoft Advertising
At Assembly, our strategic partnership with Microsoft Advertising has been a transformative catalyst for our clients’ growth across Europe. Through close collaboration, we’ve consistently delivered exceptional performance across all Microsoft Advertising environments. This has empowered us to rapidly adapt to market dynamics, leveraging Microsoft and Bing’s cutting-edge AI-driven advertising solutions to create meaningful impact for our clients. We’ve transformed complex challenges into advantages, building on Assembly’s innovative, data-driven approach with Microsoft’s technological expertise. We look forward to continuing our shared journey as we reshape brand and performance in the AI-powered landscape.
Tools of the trade
Above the usual AI-powered bidding solutions for performance, we are seeing really strong performance from Broad Match and Performance Max for our clients. I’m a huge fan of the Microsoft Audience Network through Display and Native Ads. It has become one of my go-to channels for expanding reach in a brand-safe, high-quality environment.
More recently, I’ve really enjoyed the use of Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform to help surface insights, navigate the platform, answer questions about campaign setup and more. I’m excited to see further developments this year.
The synergy across these features empowers our team to stay on the cutting edge of targeting and optimisation in Microsoft, enabling us to deliver consistently strong results for our clients.
Making a difference
Purpose lies at the heart of everything we do. We are proud to announce that we have been certified as B Corp in Europe, joining a prestigious list of just around 8,000 companies across 158 industries in 93 countries–each committed to using business as a force for good.
To ensure that our environmental impact efforts extend to our clients, we have developed the Clean Media Lab–a proprietary media decarbonisation solution. This tool enables us to calculate emissions for programmatic ads and minimise environmental impact for our clients. One of the most exciting achievements is our National Grid API integration. Leveraging Clean Media Lab, we supported a client to display ads at moments when the grid mainly ran on renewable energy. The campaign has earned multiple industry recognitions. We are currently looking to expand this solution to other clients and extend its reach to Europe in the near future.
Additionally, we have received the ‘Committed’ Badge by EcoVadis, scoring well above industry benchmarks across all four categories: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.
Innovative ideas
In 2025, we’ll be doubling down on this ethos by working closely with our partners - especially Microsoft - to develop new products, services, and tools that harness AI-driven insights across channels. This includes blending advanced data integration with powerful broad match capabilities and automated bidding, so we can tailor messaging in real time and create truly personalised customer experiences. The end goal? Marrying human creativity with cutting-edge technology to deliver scalable, sustainable growth for our clients.
Of course, we are doing more here. But I don’t want to give too many of our secrets away!
GenAI
GenAI has become an integral part of our business strategy and operations. By leveraging AI capabilities, we've enhanced our ability to make data-driven decisions that better align with consumer needs. AI plays a crucial role in accelerating search experience for both advertisers and consumers, enabling search to be an answer engine. However, there are complex challenges that come with this transformation. Key areas requiring careful navigation include advertisement controls, data privacy protection, and the impact of walled gardens in the digital ecosystem. Ultimately, it is a good thing to evolve and learn new skills to mitigate the risk and gain control in a different light.
Our team is currently rebuilding our products from the ground up, customising solutions to seamlessly incorporate AI into day-to-day operations, setting the company and clients up for success. An exciting time for advertising experiences.
Looking ahead
Search and Programmatic are undergoing a huge transformation with AI. The shift from ‘search engines’ to ‘answer engines’ poses challenge but also highlights the fact that AI has become a fundamental part of search experience. As advertisers, we must constantly adapt, evolve, and most importantly, experiment.
Looking ahead into 2025, we believe that Microsoft will see accelerated growth in its advertising ecosystem, fuelled by its OpenAI partnership and advancements in AI-driven personalisation, as well as its work with Activation Blizzard & more, all these bring new opportunities for advertisers. With tools like Copilot redefining search and productivity, Bing is poised to capture a larger share of the search market, offering deeper user engagement and actionable insights for advertisers.
To learn more about the Microsoft Advertising Partner Awards please visit www.microsoftadvertisingawards.com. Not an enrolled partner? Learn more and apply to join the Microsoft Advertising Partner Program.
