Blog post
Video ads and other key product updates for September
Welcome to the fall season and another edition of the monthly product roundup from Microsoft Advertising! Temperatures in the northern hemisphere are starting to cool down, but things are just heating up in the digital advertising space as kids go back to school, the holiday season approaches, and many folks are going through transitional moments.
With this changing landscape before us, let’s take a look at what Microsoft Advertising is delivering to you to better empower your relationships to customers.
This month’s top story: Video ads now piloting on the Microsoft Audience Network
Advertisers are increasingly looking to stand out from the competition and captivate their target audience in new, innovative ways. With the introduction of video ads on the Microsoft Audience Network, you can reach potential customers where they are actively consuming content on MSN and Microsoft News. With video ads you can boost awareness, capture attention, and drive leads for your brand. Plus, Microsoft is the only platform with access to Bing search intent data, as well as LinkedIn profile data on video assets — this means your video ads on the Microsoft Audience Network work harder to drive deeper connections and deliver you performance across the funnel. Upload snackable video assets as short as 6 seconds or leverage the rich format for storytelling with 30 seconds to 2-minute-long videos to reach audiences actively engaging across Microsoft channels.
Video ads are piloting on the Microsoft Audience Network in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. To get started with video ads, reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account representative or contact our support team.
This is a sample video ad placement and not an exhaustive list of all video ad placements on our Microsoft Audience Network. Video ads on publisher partner placements are also coming soon!
By the way, did you catch our July announcement of Video Extensions for text ads?
Vertical-based product ads in the US and UK
In addition to video ads, we’re also piloting vertical-based product ads on the Microsoft Audience Network, which allow you to use your existing feed to create rich experiences for your target customer. Leveraging your dynamic data feeds, you can showcase your auto listings, entertainment events, hotels, vacation rentals, and tours and activities in native environments. Microsoft’s audience intelligence delivers the right message to the right audience and matches the user with the items in the feed where they’ve shown interest, helping you better connect with potential customers who are ready to convert.
To get started with vertical-based product ads, reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account representative or contact our support team.
To upload your feed, navigate to Tools → Setup → Business data → Dynamic data feeds (above). Then select Upload and choose a feed schema that best aligns to your business vertical (below).
Inline appeals for product ads
Coming soon, just in time for the holidays, we’ll be making it easy for you to understand editorial rejections and to request for appeals for your product ads. With the Inline Appeal offering in the Microsoft Merchant Center interface, you’ll get visibility into any editorial rejections of offers for the respective policy violations in the Store, providing you with a very organized summary overview of key policy violations driving major rejections. In addition, you can request for appeal/manual review straight from the Microsoft Merchant Center interface, with just a single click for all rejections in that policy. No need to reach out to Ad Support and share list of rejections over email! Finally, once an appeal is submitted, you’ll be sent an acknowledgement email with appeal details, with most reviews completed within 1-3 business days.
In the editorial rejections (Policy violation details), you’ll see a quick summary of the top five policies leading to the maximum rejection for your store. Just below that, you can access links to review the polices and see samples of the rejected offers.
Click Request review for all to request for an appeal or review directly for all rejected offers of this policy. Maximum total requests: 100,000 offers per month per Store.
Speaking of shopping, did you see our new smart shopping solution for small and medium businesses?
Disclaimers in ads
For those not using Shopping Campaigns, there’s now another effective way to be compliant with policies and inform customers about specific information related to your business: Disclaimers in ads! If you’re in a vertical that has regulation requirements like Automotive, Financial Services or Health and Wellness, you can leverage disclaimers to share all that easily in your ads.
Two disclaimer layouts on PC.
Note that you must create brand new campaigns to use Disclaimers in ads, and they’re only enabled at the campaign level.
New third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking (UET)
If you’ve already invested in tech for your website, you might consider Universal Event Tracking (UET) from Microsoft Advertising supplemental, and potentially tricky to set up. That’s why we’re integrating with more third parties for easy implementation, most notably with Google Tag Manager, Shopify, WordPress and Squarespace.
To do this when you’re setting up tagging, simply select the option that says Add the tag through a website editing platform, and we’ll provide instructions for adding the tracking tag through your chosen platform. For more information, see the help pages linked above.
Reminder: If you don’t have UET yet, it’s a must-have for unlocking powerful Microsoft Advertising features! Learn more at What is UET and how can it help me?
Flexible insertion orders
With the upcoming high season, managing insertion order (IO) renewals and other constraints to your budgets can be challenging. With flexible insertion orders, you can now set open-ended and/or unlimited budget insertion orders, allowing you to manage your spend via bids and campaign budgets as you see fit.
That’s it for this month but do stay tuned for other updates to come!
Help us improve Microsoft Advertising
Your comments and feedback are integral to shape and improve our product. For any questions or feedback, you can use the new panel, reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account manager, or send us an email at advertising-feedback@microsoft.com. You can also interact with us on Twitter or suggest a feature on Microsoft Advertising Feature Suggestions.
