Blog post
Japan’s market expansion and other product updates for June
We’re back with another edition of the Microsoft Advertising product roundup! This past month we hosted Microsoft Advertising Activate and dived deeper into how Microsoft AI will improve PromoteIQ retail media programs for retailers, brands, and shoppers. Today, we’re recapping both our continued global expansion, highlighted by one particular market in the top story below, as well as product updates.
As summer now approaches, let’s dive into all that we’re doing to make Microsoft Advertising work even better for you.
This month’s top story: Microsoft Advertising, now live in Japan
These past few months have seen a substantial increase in our global footprint across Europe, Africa, Latin America (LATAM), and Asia Pacific (APAC) regions. Last week, we announced that Microsoft Advertising is now available for agencies and brands located in Japan for both search and native campaigns.
Here are five easy steps you can take to extend ads into Japan on Microsoft Advertising:
- Use the Google Import tool to upload ad copy and keywords in Japanese.
- Check location and ensure Japanese language is selected in campaign settings.
- Select both in “Who should see your ads?” so that everyone can see your ads (as we ramp up).
- Adjust bids to win auctions, and don’t forget to set sufficient daily budget. Start with enhanced cost per click (CPC), as more time and data are needed for automated bidding to perform accurately. Bid values will vary across verticals.
- Check performance in 48 hours to ensure everything is delivering as expected.
Microsoft Audience Network enhancements
As always, there’s plenty of exciting news to share about the Microsoft Audience Network. We're bringing you new ad formats, easier management, and smarter optimization.
New ad formats:
- Video Ads* are in pilot on the Microsoft Audience Network—with more choices for bidding. You can choose between CPM, CPV, and CPC to leverage the right model that meets your goals. CPM pricing* is also now available across both video and image ads on the Microsoft Audience Network.
| Goal | Bidding | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Reach / Impression | CPM | Bid per 1000 viewable impressions Each viewable impression for a video is defined as “2 seconds of continuous play when video is >=50% in user’s view”. |
| Video views | CPV | Bid on a single view Video view is defined as at least 15 seconds of video viewed. |
| Website visits | CPC | Bid per click Click is defined as a user clicking on the video and landing on the website. |
- Multi-asset audience ads* are an upgraded version of Audience Ads. With this new format, you can add up to 16 images, up to 15 short headlines, up to 5 long headlines, and up to 5 descriptions. Microsoft Advertising will automatically serve the best performing combinations to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message.
- You can also manage your Audience Ads within the Microsoft Advertising Editor tool, which includes support of campaign settings, bids and modifiers, targeting, audience associations, ads, and now images! This makes managing your Audience Ads campaigns at scale easier than ever!
- Image extensions can now be imported via the Google Import tool along with other related entities. Additionally, audiences and associations can now be imported through Facebook Import. Our import tools are helping you to bring over all your ads, creatives, and targeting options so you can get started on Microsoft Advertising with a click of a button.
- Quickly modify the look and feel of your ads with Creator tools—a collection of media library, insights, and image editing tools that levels up your Microsoft Audience Network creative strategy.
- For more ideas on how to manage your native advertising creative, check out our May blog here.
Smarter optimization:
- We’re piloting automated bidding* across the Microsoft Audience Network! Currently, enhanced CPC is available so you can maximize conversions on audience campaigns while keeping CPCs below stated bids. And additional automated bidding strategies are on the way!
*In pilot—if you would like to participate, please contact your account representative or our support team.
Support for importing image extensions from Google Ads
As mentioned above, we’re excited to share that Microsoft Advertising now fully supports importing image extensions from Google Ads to help advertisers manage visual assets across platforms. Here are some additional details on what to know about importing image extensions:
Your extensions will be imported as single-image extensions, and they’ll be associated to also serve on the Microsoft Audience Network by default. We recommend, however, that you opt into Multi-Image Extensions for a better ad experience in which a carousel of your images is displayed.
In order for you to run Multi-image extensions, you’ll have to add Name/Display Text which is required for this format.
Multimedia Ads expansion
In other news, to help you extend your rich visual experiences across placements, Multimedia Ads are now available on the Microsoft Audience Network via the search workflow in the US, UK, FR, and DE markets. They will be available in the rest of the Microsoft Audience Network markets starting this week. In addition, we have expanded Multimedia Ads to Yahoo.com globally and to our Images tab on Microsoft Bing for more volume.
Responsive Search Ads in the mobile app and disclaimer support
For any users of our mobile app, you can now manage all your Responsive Search Ads from within the Microsoft Advertising mobile app! As a reminder, last month’s roundup highlighted our recent extension of the deadline to migrate to Responsive Search Ads from June to August 29, 2022.
In addition, for advertisers needing to inform customers about specific information with disclaimers, we’ve now extended disclaimer support to Responsive Search Ads and should roll out to everyone in the coming week. As you see below, there are two layouts: pop-up and line layout.
That’s it for June! We’ll see you back here after the July 4th holiday with another recap. We hope you all have a great start to the summer—take care, everyone!
Help us improve Microsoft Advertising
Your comments and feedback are integral to shape and improve our product. You can use the Microsoft Advertising Feedback portal, in-product feedback, Twitter, or Instagram. You can also email us at advertising-feedback@microsoft.com or contact Support.
