Audience Ads updates and other product news for October

Welcome to the October edition of the Microsoft Advertising product roundup! This past month there was a real September surge of exciting announcements, from Video and Connected TV ads to Generative AI updates, which include our partnership with Snap and Axel Springer.

This and much more were part of our DMEXCO coverage a few weeks ago. And we didn’t even mention Microsoft Advertising Network for retail or the fact that Microsoft Invest was ranked as a Strong Performer in the latest Forrester Wave report for Omnichannel Demand-Side Platforms!

There’s a wealth of goodness above, but of course, that’s not all! Let’s dive into a few other key product updates for this month.

This month’s top story: Audience Ads updates

With Microsoft Audience Ads, you can target your ideal audience based on Microsoft’s understanding of their interests and consumer intent signals. These high quality, cross-device ads show on sites like MSN, Microsoft Edge (the Microsoft browser), Outlook.com, and publisher placements.

Leveraging rich consumer intent signals, which include searches, web activity, profile data, and more, brands can serve highly relevant messages to an audience who’s ready to convert and reach them in beautiful placements across the web.

This month we’re announcing a lot of exciting product updates for Audience Ads, including:

- More results, less effort:

• Maximize Conversions and Target CPA (in pilot): With Maximize Conversions, Microsoft Advertising automatically sets your bids in real time to get as many conversions as possible within your budget. With Target CPA, you set your budget and your target 30-day average CPA, and Microsoft Advertising automatically sets your bids in real time to get you to this average.
• New markets (released): Microsoft recently expanded to 58 new markets for Audience Ads in mid-August, which brings their coverage to 187 markets across the globe.

- Valuable audiences:

• Predictive Targeting (released): Predictive Targeting recently released for Audience Ads, which allows advertisers to leverage Microsoft audience intelligence to find relevant audiences they might not have considered targeting that are more likely to convert.

- More engaging ads:

• Microsoft Casual Games expansion (rolling out): Microsoft is expanding Audience Ads onto new placements, like home, menu, and game screens across games that come defaulted onto Windows computers. Audience Ads currently serve in Treasure Hunt and Jigsaw and will serve across all Microsoft Casual Games by 2024.
• Microsoft 365 expansion (rolling out): Microsoft is expanding Audience Ads onto new markets of the free consumer version of the Microsoft 365 mobile app. Rolling out in the US by October and EU markets by January on Android.
• Video and CTV Ads (released): Microsoft released Video and CTV Ads, which allow brands to reach large scale and high-value audiences across Microsoft properties and publisher partners in online video and CTV placements.

New UI enhancements for updated travel lodging

Focusing just on travel, we’ve made some enhancements to the user experience as well. As an increasing number of users show a growing interest in a wider range of lodging options, we find it outdated to limit our terminology to just “hotels” on our Microsoft Advertising platform for our Lodging Solutions.

This shift signifies our commitment to embracing all types of accommodation for our advertisers, in response to evolving traveler and advertiser preferences. This is further substantiated by the recent introduction of Property Promotion Ads for Vacation Rentals, an industry first aimed at vacation rental customers, which until now couldn’t take full advantage of our Lodging Solutions.

To make your setup easier and more intuitive, we’re revamping our naming conventions for the setup of our lodging solutions, to better reflect the travel offerings we have.

Starting October 3, Hotel Campaigns will be renamed to Lodging Campaigns, and all the “hotel” nomenclature will be updated to “property” nomenclature (ex. Hotel groups are now Property groups).

More vertical ads rolling out across the search partner network: Credit card and Property Promotion ads

We’re improving the experience for our vertical-specific advertisers in other ways too: now more vertical ads are available across the search partner network, allowing you to extend the reach of your powerful ads to other partner placements: Automotive & Tours and Activities ads have already been available, but now we have Credit card and Property Promotion ads rolling out across the search partner network.

Professional service ads and more are coming in the future. For more information on our different types of vertical ads, check out this article Keep performance high with vertical ads.

A reminder on Microsoft Advertising’s Performance Max open beta

Lastly, we don’t want advertisers to forget that Microsoft Advertising’s Performance Max is still in open beta and available to start testing for your campaigns!

If you’re interested in upleveling your marketing with predictive solutions and automated workflows, consider trying out Performance Max with some budget as a complement to your existing search and shopping campaigns this holiday season.

That’s all for this month, we’ll see you back on November 7 with another recap. Take care!

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, and as always, contact Support.