Microsoft announces new updates

If you want to know more details about Microsoft’s announcement, keep on reading

Microsoft announced new updates on its blog, including vertical-based ads, Automotive ads, Customer Match enhancements, and more. These features should be rolling out in these upcoming weeks across US markets.

Vertical-based ads: these types of ads appear in different formats depending on the user’s search intent. Microsoft’s AI uses the data feed to source the needed information to display in the ad. Now, Microsoft claims that this new format will shorten the time span and resources required to set up these campaigns. 

Automotive Ads: these will be unique to the automobile industry. Microsoft’s format will display a picture of the vehicle along with its main details and a brief product description. These ads will be shown mainly in the Asia Pacific and Latin American markets, after successfully testing in North America and Europe. 

Customer Match: Microsoft announced that Customer Match will be available in new markets. If you are using a Customer Data platform, you can connect it to Microsoft Advertising and import your customer lists. This integration includes Ampertiy and Adobe Ad Cloud, but further integrations will be available soon. 

What does Microsoft mean by “new audiences”? In-market audiences are now available in 20+ new Latin American countries, 10+ countries in the Asia Pacific region, and piloting new markets in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore. 

Reminder: Microsoft also added a warning for advertisers regarding the end of Expanded Text Ads. In September, the only search ad type that can be created will be Responsive Search Ads (RSA), as we’ve already seen with Google Ads this past June. 

Our Take

Once again, Microsoft is finally trying to keep up with Google and Facebook’s pace. It is always a good thing for search engines to release features and updates that give marketers more control over their ads. However, we were intrigued by the announcement of the new Automotive format, since Google tried to implement this in the past, and failed. Will this be Microsoft’s advantage? If the biggest search engine couldn’t pull it off, it should be interesting to see how Microsoft plans to win this battle.

As expected, we will see these updates in the near future and we’ll let you know if anything catches our eye. Stay tuned!

About Quantikal

Quantikal is a data-driven performance marketing agency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We help clients scale their business through profitable digital ad spending by constantly obsessing over clients’ key metrics. Quantikal’s experience working in diverse online companies in marketing roles including media buying allows us to provide solutions in the ever-demanding increase of marketing performance, doing more with less thus becoming a strategic partner.