Microsoft Rolls out Advertising Product Updates in Advance of Q4

Advertisers angered by this week’s reports of Google’s artificial inflation of auction prices (and a little auction-position manipulation to boot) might be eager to hear about any positive advertising updates from Google’s competitors. 

Luckily, Microsoft delivered some new ad products earlier in Sept. that have caught our eye. In this post, I’ll describe the updates and give my take on what’s most promising (and why).

Enjoy!

Microsoft Ad Updates: September 2023

There are four significant updates I’ve got my eye on. Microsoft advertisers can now:

1. Create Audience Associations in Bulk within Microsoft Ads Editor (MAE). Advertisers can now associate audiences, within MAE, to multiple ad groups/campaigns in bulk.
2. Use Auto-Generated Assets for Responsive Search Ads (RSAs). This feature empowers Microsoft to generate assets in addition to the ones you already provided, which gives a set of visual options and impact to messaging that’s proven effective.
3. Leverage RSAs for Multimedia Ads. Advertisers can copy RSAs to multimedia ads in order to leverage large visuals within ads, increasing visibility.
4. Upload Logo Extensions. Advertisers can (and should!) add logos to ads at the account, campaign, or ad group level.
   
   

What’s most impactful?

Advertisers seeking efficiency and scale (which is pretty much all of us) should be especially intrigued by the ability to copy their top-performing RSAs to multimedia ads. Adding visuals to the most resonant RSA messages will help advertisers catch more eyes with engaging themes and verbiage.

If you haven’t yet put RSAs into play, start there! RSAs let advertisers test a range of tactics, from flexible copy themes that allow winners to emerge to rigid pinned messaging known to be effective. Use them to test themes, and try dynamic keyword insertion – we’ve seen it boost performance on our ads, especially when pinning to the first headline position.

Conclusion

Do I expect these changes and the Google news to shake up search market share? No. But given the evidence that Google doesn’t always have our best interests at heart, it’s always good to diversify your campaigns and platforms – just make sure the results are worth it for your brand or clients.