Microsoft announced another round of feature rollouts for advertisers, including changes to match types, ad formats, product rollouts and more. These updates follow two rounds of big announcements in early April and late April. Here’s what advertisers need to know.
Changes to Phrase Match & Broad Match Modifier
Following in Google’s footsteps, Microsoft has announced that phrase match will begin to adopt the matching behaviors of modified broad match. This is in parody with Google’s changes that were announced in February and is designed to ease management for advertisers managing campaigns across both channels since there will no longer be match type differences.
This change will begin to take effect in mid-May.
New Two-Line Desktop Search Ad Format
Microsoft began testing a new ad format in the U.S. in April, in which some ads began to deliver with only the headline and the URL. In other words, these ads will be delivered without any description lines. The SERP will algorithmically determine when to use this format, at auction time. It is currently only utilized on desktop.
Advertisers do not need to take any action in order to begin to start delivering these ads. Advertisers can opt out by contacting Microsoft Ads support.
Customer Match Now Broadly Available
On April 6th, Microsoft Ads announced that customer match would be coming soon. Well, friends, today is the day! Customer match is now broadly available in all markets except for the European Union, UK and CN. The health & wellness vertical is not supported.
Advertisers can employ customer match within both the Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network.
Dynamics 365 & Microsoft Ads Integration
Microsoft also announced an integration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Ads. Advertisers using Dynamics will be able to import customer segments from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights into Microsoft Ads.
With this integration, advertisers using Dynamics 365 can coordinate efforts within Microsoft Ads with efforts in other platforms such as Marketo, Mailchimp, and more.
Smart Goals Roll Out
Advertisers that have implemented the UET tag but are not yet using conversion tracking will begin to see “Smart Goals” being tracked in their account. Microsoft uses signals to identify which sessions should be considered a conversion, including session duration, pages per session, location, and more.
If an account is eligible to begin tracking Smart Goals, the advertiser will receive a notification in advance.
Updated Conversion Setup Process
Microsoft has designed a new process to assist with the conversion creation process. The setup process will now ask advertisers a series of questions in order to make the process more intuitive.
Migrating DSA Campaigns to Mixed Campaigns
In November, Microsoft Ads announced that DSA campaigns would be migrated to mixed campaigns. DSA campaigns will be transitioned to search campaigns and the ad groups will move to the type of “dynamic” That migration is set to begin in May.
After the change is complete, advertisers will no longer be able to create new DSA campaigns. Rather, advertisers wishing to use DSA should create normal search campaigns and then add dynamic ad groups to those campaigns.
Shopping Campaigns and Extensions Available in New Markets
In 2020, Microsoft announced that advertisers can drive engagement through multi-image extensions and promotion extensions. Initially those were only available in the U.S. but are now available globally!
In the US, advertisers can now also take advantage of single-image extensions on mobile.
