Build, steer, and measure your campaigns with AI: What's new in Microsoft Advertising this October

Start with Microsoft Advertising today and launch your first campaign in minutes. Learn more about AI-powered campaign creation in the Help Center.

Get more visibility and controls in your Performance Max campaigns

Once your campaign is live, the next step is steering it. Whether you have a newly built Performance Max campaign or you’ve run one for a while, you want to see what’s working. We’re continually listening to your feedback on the additional controls and reporting transparency you’re looking for. Here’s what’s recently rolled out and what’s coming soon:

• New targeting options: Age and gender targeting is now generally available on Performance Max. It helps you improve your targeting and efficiency by including and excluding specific age groups and genders from ad delivery. Device targeting, which lets you include and exclude specific types of devices, is rolling out to all advertisers in the coming weeks.
• Exclusions pilots: Audience exclusions, which allow you to exclude certain audiences from your Performance Max campaigns, are now in open pilot. We're refining brand exclusions so you can choose to apply them to text ads only, while still showing up for these brand searches on product ads. If you’re interested in joining either of these pilots, please contact your account team or Support.
  
• New reporting: Search term reporting and auction insights reporting are now available, so you dive deeper into which specific searches your ads show on and how you compare with competitors. Search term landing page reporting is rolling out to advertisers starting mid-November. It helps you better understand how user intent maps to the web page they were routed to.

Keep AI-generated ad copy on brand with messaging guidelines

Steering your campaign also means shaping what your ads say. AI can write strong ad copy in seconds, but it still needs to sound like your brand. You now have greater control over AI-generated ad copy using messaging guidelines. It’s available in open pilot for Performance Max campaigns and Search campaigns that have AI Max enabled.

Messaging guidelines let you provide up to 40 guidelines to help steer generated copy and protect your brand. We recommend primarily using these guidelines for broader rules around claims, themes, concepts, tone, or language to avoid. For example, a high-end retail brand could add “Never imply that products are low cost” as a guideline. This helps reduce the risk of AI generating messaging that doesn’t meet your brand or business requirements.

You can also provide positive guidance, such as preferred wording, themes, or tone of voice, to further shape how your ads are generated. By setting these guidelines upfront, you give AI clearer boundaries for content generation. This helps maintain brand consistency and reduces the time spent reviewing and editing generated copy.