Google and Bing have expanded ad sales suspensions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. Google has temporarily halted ads from serving to Russia-based users, the company announced Thursday. Similarly, Microsoft announced that it will suspend all new sales of its products and services in Russia.
Why we care. The two leading search engines now prohibit ads targeting users located in Russia, cutting off the main channels western search marketers use to reach audiences there. This will affect brands advertising to Russian users, but Yandex (Russia’s second-biggest search engine by market share) remains an option.
These ad suspensions serve to protest Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but they also help search engines avoid brand safety debacles like misinformation campaigns making it through their automated systems and showing to users.
Escalating restrictions on Russian state-funded media. Last week, both search engines stopped running ads from Russian state-funded media outlets. In addition, Microsoft is “further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages,” Brad Smith, president and vice chair of Microsoft, said in an announcement on February 28.
Perhaps this is what Russia wanted. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications regulator, has accused YouTube of running “advertising campaigns to misinform the Russian audience,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Russian agency demanded that Google change its ad moderation policies and discontinue such ads.
The new ad suspensions are likely to primarily affect Russia-based businesses, but they may also put a temporary end to the ads Russia is complaining about.
Social media platforms halted ad sales in Russia, too. Snap Inc. and Twitter have both paused ads in Ukraine and Russia, with the former halting them in Belarus as well. Facebook has stopped serving ads from Russian state media, but (at the time of publication) is still showing ads to Russian users.
Microsoft Advertising’s Shopping campaigns will roll out in new markets in Latin America over the coming weeks, the company announced Tuesday. In addition, Marketing with Purpose attributes will become available globally, multi-asset Audience Ads are being tested in closed beta and the company also plans to roll out seasonality adjustments for automated bidding this month.
New markets for Shopping campaigns. Shopping campaigns will become available for brands advertising in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela over the next few weeks. Advertisers will also be able to extend Shopping campaigns to the Microsoft Audience Network as well.
Marketing with Purpose attributes now available globally. Microsoft’s Marketing with Purpose business attributes, which first launched in September 2021, are now available in all markets.
An example of a Marketing with Purpose attribute. Image: Microsoft Advertising.
Marketing with Purpose business attributes help advertisers convey unique selling propositions within their ads. There are now 32 attributes available across four categories: Inclusion, Environmental, Community/social responsibility and Accessibility.
Multi-asset Audience Ads in pilot. Microsoft is now testing multi-asset Audience Ads. With this update, advertisers can add up to 16 images, up to 15 short headlines, up to five long headlines, and up to five descriptions for the platform to automatically match and serve the best performing combinations to audiences.
Interested advertisers can opt into this pilot by reaching out to their Microsoft Advertising account representative.
Google Import gets more support. Those that import their campaigns from Google Ads are now able to also import their image extensions into search and audience campaigns via Google Import. Advertisers can find their imported image assets in their image library.
Seasonality adjustments for automated bidding. Seasonality adjustments for automated bidding will roll out later this month. This feature is supported for Search campaigns (including Search campaigns extended to the Microsoft Audience Network), Shopping campaigns and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns.
Why we care. These updates, which are designed to offer advertisers better automation and more capabilities, are another installment in a years-long streak of incremental improvements for Microsoft Advertising.
The expansion of Shopping campaigns, for example, provides advertisers with another non-Google channel they can use to reach their audiences in Latin America. Multi-asset Audience Ads may soon have more input fields, which Microsoft Advertising’s systems can use to generate more combinations that may potentially resonate with more customers. Seasonality adjustments for automated bidding can help address short-term fluctuations without a long-term effect on learning. And, the company continues to show its commitment to making the transition from Google Ads to Microsoft Advertising seamless through its steady buildout of Google Import features.
Auto-apply recommendations in Microsoft Advertising are now out of beta and generally available, the company announced Monday. By default, advertisers are opted into all five of the platform’s recommendation types (more on that below).
Why we care. Microsoft Advertising first launched this feature in beta in March 2021 and now it’s widely available, which means it can potentially help more advertisers save time when creating ads or optimizing their campaigns.
While opting into auto-apply recommendations won’t increase your budgets, it’s still authorizing the platform to make changes on your behalf, without your involvement. Advertisers should assess whether that’s acceptable for them and opt out if it’s not.
Five types of recommendations. Microsoft Advertising currently offers the following auto-apply recommendation types:
Advertisers are opted into all five recommendation types by default; opting in does not increase budgets.
View scheduled recommendations. Recommendations that will automatically apply are viewable in the “Scheduled to auto-apply” section of the Recommendations page.
A “Scheduled to auto-apply” card. Image: Microsoft Advertising.
The cards in this section provide a short description of the potential issue, the date the recommendation will be automatically applied, and advertisers can also view the recommendation from this card.
Email notifications can be enabled for recommendations by switching on the “Ad performance optimization” email preference for all account managers. Recommendations are automatically applied seven days after the email notification is sent.
Reference recommendation history. Advertisers have two ways to keep tabs on applied recommendations:
The Change history page – Select “Recommendations auto apply” in the Change history page to show changes made by auto-apply recommendations within a given timeframe.
The clock icon – Click on the clock icon that appears in the top-right corner of the Recommendations pages to view your applied recommendations history. Select the “Auto applied” tab to see the auto-apply history for the previous 30 days.
Opt out. Advertisers can opt out at any time by navigating to the auto-apply recommendation control center (the thunderbolt icon on the top-right side of the Recommendations page, shown below).
The Recommendations page in Microsoft Advertising. Image: Microsoft.
From there, uncheck each recommendation type that you don’t want to automatically apply. Note: These recommendations can still be manually applied in the future.
Microsoft Advertising has launched in 29 more countries in Europe and Africa, the company announced Monday. This expansion will increase the platform’s reach by 41 million customers, adding 400 million monthly searches on Microsoft and partner sites, according to the company.
Why we care. Advertisers that use Microsoft Advertising can now reach potential customers in 29 new markets. This update may make Microsoft Advertising more attractive to advertisers that sell products or services internationally.
The company plans to continue expanding throughout 2022 by launching in new markets in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The new markets. Beginning today, the following markets are available on Microsoft Advertising: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey and the Vatican City.
As such, Microsoft Advertising will also support the following languages: Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian and Turkish.
Supported products and ad formats. In each new market, Microsoft Advertising will support: text ads, Responsive Search Ads, Dynamic Search Ads, Shopping Campaigns, audience targeting (age, demographic, location, device), remarketing, Dynamic Remarketing, automated bidding (maximum clicks, maximum conversions, target cost per acquisition (CPA) and target return on ad spend (ROAS)), Universal Event Tracking (UET) and Conversion Tracking.
Portfolio bid strategies are now available globally, Microsoft Advertising announced on Tuesday. The platform’s automated integration with Google Tag Manager (GTM) is also now generally available.
Portfolio bid strategy management in Microsoft Advertising. Image: Microsoft.
Portfolio bid strategies. This feature automatically adjusts bidding across multiple campaigns to balance under- and over-performing campaigns that share the same bidding strategy (like maximize conversions, target CPA, target impression share, etc).
To get started with portfolio bid strategies in Microsoft Advertising, navigate to Tools > Portfolio bid strategy. Then, select a bid strategy and include complimentary budgets. You can also use shared budgets with portfolio bid strategies to let your campaigns draw from a single budget.
Automated integration with GTM. Microsoft Advertising’s integration with Google Tag Manager enables you to automatically copy the setup used by your existing Google tags.
To do so, sign into Google and select the Google Tag Manager account and container via Microsoft Advertising online. Next, enable the permissions to update your setup and Microsoft Advertising will set up the UET tag with additional parameters.
Why we care. Portfolio bid strategies can help save time that might otherwise be spent manually adjusting bids. The automated GTM integration also helps you save time by copying over the Google tag setup you’re already using.
“The more the platforms automate, the more we, as search marketers, lose control.” That has largely been the rhetoric over the years, and while there is certainly some truth to it, there are techniques that can help you reap the benefits of automation without sacrificing control.
Google has already announced plans to deprecate expanded text ads (ETAs), leaving advertisers with no choice but to embrace responsive search ads (RSAs). However, marketers can still use what they have learned from ETAs to improve their RSAs, increasing their chances of a successful transition. At SMX Next, Joe Martinez, co-founder at Paid Media Pros, shared how he benchmarks with ETAs to get the most out of the automated capabilities of RSAs.
Create ETAs to use later
“RSAs can really be hit or miss,” Martinez said, noting that “The reporting for this ad format is fairly poor.” “They [Google] give you a ‘good,’ ‘better,’ ‘best’-type aspect of how your ads are performing and we still see the overall metrics within the main columns, but we don’t get the right information on which combinations of the responsive search ads are performing best, because we can add in a variety of different headlines, different descriptions, but we don’t know what combinations are working.”
This lack of performance transparency is even more troubling for advertisers that currently rely on expanded text ads, since Google is sunsetting the format in June 2022.
“So, to prepare for this, you need to start making sure that you are focusing on adding as many expanded text ads in your account as possible,” Martinez said, “I’ve typically held around three to four expanded text ads — well, now we’re starting to add even more.”
Image: Joe Martinez and Michelle Morgan.
By doing so, “We’re saying, ‘Okay, if I am going to eventually have to enter in a variety of different headlines and descriptions into my RSAs, I want to make sure that I’m entering the right ones — the ones that are going to perform the best when I am forced to use the RSA format,” he explained.
In addition to establishing a performance benchmark, how these ETAs perform should inform the creation of your RSAs when you eventually have to move your ads over to that format. “We’re making sure that we’re doing a bunch of varieties [of ETAs] so we know specifically which combinations are working because we’re controlling that with ETAs,” Martinez said.
To get the best benchmarks using this method, advertisers should ensure that their ads are set to rotate evenly so that impression share is divided across both ETAs and RSAs.
The RSA format allows advertisers to add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, which can be pinned to specific positions. By benchmarking with ETAs (as described above), advertisers can take those findings and use them to pin headlines and descriptions in RSAs to gain more ETA-like functionality from them: “We’re pretty much creating our own expanded text ad within the RSA format,” Martinez said.
Image: Joe Martinez and Michelle Morgan.
“Now, Google will say it can potentially hurt your Ad Rank if you’re not giving it [Google Ads’ machine learning systems] the full amount of options and combinations that Google would like,” he said, noting that, for some advertisers, this is a worthwhile compromise: “Okay, you may hurt your Ad Rank, that’s fine. But, we do understand in certain industries, control and order of message is very necessary.”
Despite the potential decrease in Ad Rank, advertisers in highly regulated industries may have to rely on pinning because, in some organizations, legal departments might have to approve every piece of ad copy that is written.
“So sometimes you may have to sacrifice on the Ad Rank just to make sure that your ad copy is on brand, it’s correct and you’re not going to get in trouble within your specific industry,” Martinez said.
For advertisers that aren’t bound to such stringent policies, pinning can still help create the experience you want to deliver to users, which may also justify any potential hit to your Ad Rank score, he added.
Utilize ad customizers
Ad customizers can provide additional control without sacrificing the flexibility that RSAs have to offer. You can use them to automatically insert keywords, a countdown timer, location, price, inventory count, discount rates or product names, for example.
Image: Joe Martinez and Michelle Morgan.
“As you’re grouping and testing out different types of headlines within your expanded text ads, keep note: If your ad customizer ads are performing better, you may want to add those into your new responsive search ads and possibly pin them in certain locations,” Martinez said.
However, advertisers using this technique should be aware that there are no IF functions for RSAs.
Image: Joe Martinez and Michelle Morgan.
“We’re losing that function and it makes sense because there are already so many different combinations that we really wouldn’t be able to see if an IF function customizer was working with RSAs,” he said, “So if you are using that one and you love it, test it out, understand which audience is seeing that one ad or that one variable, then you can start focusing on restructuring your campaign to a specific audience just to make sure that they’re seeing the proper headline that performed better for that particular audience.”
Unlock the potential of your RSAs before ETAs go away
RSAs are already the default ad type for Search campaigns, but, on its way out, the ETA format still offers advertisers one of the most important tools for successful campaigns — data. Start adding more ETAs to your campaigns ahead of the June 2022 deprecation date to prepare your brand (or your client’s brand) for a smooth transition.
In 2021, PPC professionals navigated changes in keyword match types and automated bidding, scratched their heads at the prospect of a future without third-party cookies and navigated their role in an increasingly automated industry.
Prompted by the vision that platforms, like Google, have for their services as well as increased concern over user privacy, these changes underscored adaptability as one of the traits that define successful marketers. Below, we’ve summarized the most impactful changes, announcements and developments that shaped PPC this past year and, in all likelihood, will continue to influence the years ahead as well.
“Broad match now looks at additional signals in your account to deliver more relevant searches,” Google also announced. These signals include landing pages and keywords in your ad group.
The PPC community’s reaction to this news was mixed: “With the recent changes that Google has made, it seems like a bit of a (very) thinly veiled attempt to take back control from advertisers,” said Amy Bishop, owner of Cultivative, “You can’t optimize against what you can’t see, and you certainly can’t optimize against controls that have been taken away.”
Kirk Williams, owner of ZATO Marketing, had a different opinion: “This is simply a logical progression in [Google’s] ever-changing match type behavior that mirrors changes in other areas, pointing towards a world in which Google uses the millions of signals under its control to make auction time decisions for which the limited, human advertiser is unable to make as technology and machine learning bidding solutions progress.”
In Q2 2021, the final nail in BMM’s coffin was hammered in when the platform announced a deprecation date for BMM keywords. To put an end to the saga (for now), Google also made it so that phrase match or broad match keywords that are identical to a query are now always preferred as long as they are eligible to match.
Microsoft Advertising made an important change in this area as well: Beginning in March 2021, it migrated all search, shopping and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns without an automated bidding strategy in place over to Enhanced CPC.
FLoC was heavily debated, but not rolled out
With the deprecation of third-party cookies slated for 2022 (which Google later pushed back to the latter half of 2023), it wasn’t much of a surprise when Google first announced that it was testing an alternative targeting technology in October 2020. Known as Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), the proposal was opened for advertiser testing in Q2 2021.
Despite being billed as more privacy-friendly for users, there were widespread concerns about techniques such as fingerprinting, which could be used to reverse engineer individuals from the cohort. The Electronic Frontier Foundation even published an article opposing the proposal. Marketers also shared concerns that Google was being opportunistic and using the deprecation of third-party cookies to create a “walled garden” for itself.
Chrome’s competitors have no plans to adopt FLoC, which will limit its functionality. There was even a proposal by WordPress to block FLoC by default. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority also engaged Google about the proposal and the search company agreed not to favor its own products or access personal user data.
The Privacy Sandbox timeline. Image: Google.
To keep the industry updated about its progress with FLoC, Google published a Privacy Sandbox timeline. As of December 2021, FLoC is scheduled to undergo testing from Q1 to Q3 2022, with adoption slated for Q4 of that year.
This was also the year that Performance Max campaigns, an automated campaign type that runs across all Google ad inventory, became available to all advertisers. Google bundled that news (as it seems to have done quite frequently in 2021) with another announcement: Smart Shopping and Local campaigns would be “upgraded” to Performance Max in 2022.
Consumer interest insights in the Insights page. Image: Google.
Performance Max campaigns are also part of the Google Ads Insights Page, which shows currently trending searches, auction insights and interest predictions tailored to the account. In November 2021, the company expanded on the Insights page by adding four features: consumer interest insights, audience insights, change history insights and auction insights, and demand forecasts.
In April 2021, instant match rates became available for Customer Match, which allows advertisers to use their first-party data to remarket to customers on Google Search, Shopping, Gmail and YouTube. Then, in November 2021, the platform rolled out some of Customer Match’s features to all policy-compliant advertisers, enabling them to observe their lists to see how well they perform against the general audience, among other capabilities.
Advertisers gained access to some new data when Google announced that it would show historical data for queries that received impressions but no clicks in the search terms report for Search and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns. This didn’t reverse the September 2020 change that initially limited search terms reporting, as the data is still only for “terms that were searched by a significant number of users,” but the data could reveal what’s failing to attract the right audience. If you haven’t exported your historical query data, make sure to do so before February 1, 2022 — that’s when Google plans to remove historical query data collected prior to September 1, 2020, from the search terms report.
In terms of other fresh capabilities and updates, Google Ads ditched campaign drafts in an updated experiments page, which eliminated a clunky part of the workflow for testing. There was also a new budget report, which shows a monthly spend forecast that advertisers can use to understand how editing their budget can affect the campaign’s spending limit.
The Google Partner Program changes that were initially slated to go into effect in June 2020 were pushed back to February 2022 due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic. In addition to the postponement, Google revisited some of the changes, namely enabling Partners to either dismiss or apply recommendations to achieve a 70% optimization score and keeping the 90-day spend threshold at $10,000 (instead of the proposed $20,000 every 90 days). After the delay announcement, Partners that already met the 2022 requirements before the deadline requested to receive their new badges — Google consented.
The company also began testing a new three-strikes program for accounts that repeatedly violate ad policies. The system starts with a warning and no penalties for an initial violation. From there, each violation has an increasingly stringent penalty until the account is finally suspended. PPC professionals were largely in agreement with the program, though they were very skeptical about policy application due to the frequency of incorrectly flagged ads.
Microsoft Advertising made waves of its own
One prominent pattern we observed this year was Microsoft’s investment in industry-specific ad products: it released features specifically for automotive, tour and leisure, credit card and health insurance businesses.
The company also integrated Microsoft Clarity, its free tool to help site owners better understand visitor behavior, with Microsoft Advertising, which may help marketers analyze post-click behavior to identify roadblocks on the path to conversion.
Advertisers in the U.S. might also be happy to know that Microsoft rolled out support for Spanish language ads this year as well.
Vertical-specific ad updates
Shopping. Since Google and Bing launched organic Shopping results, many of their commerce-related product offerings have been designed to serve both advertisers and non-advertisers. One running theme in 2021 was the proliferation of shopping integrations, which are typically plugin-type solutions that enable retailers to get their product listings into organic results or run paid ads directly from their CMS, making it easier for SMBs that don’t work with an agency.
Local. At its annual Marketing Livestream event, Google announced a number of new local campaign ad formats, including:
Auto Suggest ads, which show ads based on the searcher’s location. The example Google gave for this was that if you search for “oil change” in Maps, Google might show an ad for an auto garage that is near your current location.
Navigational ads, which are shown when a person is en route to a destination using Maps driving directions.
Similar Places ads (shown below), which can show when a user searches for a specific business that is closed at the time of the search.
Similar Places ads in Google Maps. Image: Google.
In addition, the company also launched an open beta for US-based advertisers to expand store pickup options by adding a “pickup later” label to their local inventory ads.
Yelp also broke new ground by launching Yelp Audiences, its first offering that enables both location-based and non-location-based advertisers to reach Yelp users across the web, based on their Yelp search activity.
Video and image. YouTube ad creation became simpler for SMBs this year — in June, the company announced a new workflow, enabling advertisers to launch a campaign by adding a video, selecting the audiences they want to reach and designating a budget.
Google also added the ability for brands to show browsable product images below their video ads for campaigns that have “Product and brand consideration” or “Brand awareness and reach” set as the goal. Prior to this update, Video action campaigns were the only campaign type that could be linked to product feeds from Google Merchant Center.
The new mobile YouTube ad creation workflow (left) and campaign metrics (right).
In Q3 2021, YouTube ads were the breakout star of Google’s earnings report, bringing in $7.2 billion in revenue, an increase of 43% quarter-over-quarter. With that kind of success, the company may decide to release more video-oriented features and products for advertisers in 2022.
Brand safety continued to be a concern for advertisers and platforms responded by introducing exclusion controls: Facebook expanded its test of topic exclusion controls, claiming that advertisers were able to avoid appearing next to excluded categories 94-99% of the time. And, Google began rolling out dynamic exclusion lists around April 2021.
Advertising and law
Google was at the center of a number of accusations and regulatory predicaments this year, which is typical in just about any given year. However, this year started out with an event unlike any other — the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A week after the attack, Google paused all political ads through to the inauguration. Interestingly, five months later, researchers from the University of Michigan School of Information published a study that found that Google serves 48% of all ad traffic on “fake” news sites.
For ads served in India and Italy, Google passed on digital service taxes (levied on it by regulatory entities) to advertisers. It was already doing this to advertisers for ads served in Austria, Turkey, the UK, France and Spain. In March, Maryland became the first state to impose a tax on digital advertising — legislatures in other states, like New York, Connecticut, Washington, West Virginia, Montana, Nebraska and the District of Columbia are also considering imposing their own taxes on digitals ads or the sale of data. It’s not clear how this will pan out domestically, but advertisers should look to their European counterparts to learn how to deal with it (if the time comes).
In June, Google agreed to adjust its ad technology to provide more flexibility and transparency as well as improve the way its Ad Manager services works with rival ad servers and sales platforms, in addition to paying a $268 million fine to French regulators — the French Competition Authority claimed that Google Ad Manager provided AdX (where publishers sell space to advertisers in real-time) with exclusive data to improve its own chances.
And, details from “Jedi Blue,” an alleged arrangement between Facebook and Google in which the latter would charge the former lower fees and give Facebook other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for the social media platform’s support on Google’s header bidding alternative, were made public throughout the year.
The collusion aspect may carry heavy consequences for both entities, but it will be a long time before there’s a conclusion to this story. When asked about Jedi Blue, the marketers that spoke to us seemed indifferent, citing the lack of viable Google alternatives for advertising.
Looking ahead to 2022
We’re certain to hear more about FLoC and the deprecation of third-party cookies as we make our way through 2022 — timelines may shift as they have in years passed. While third-party cookies aren’t going away until 2023, ETAs will be sunsetted in July 2022, so advertisers should test out RSAs before they have no choice but to use them.
On February 1, 2022, Google will remove historical query data collected prior to September 1, 2020, so advertisers should export that data to reference later before that deadline. Smart Shopping and Local campaigns are also changing sometime in 2022 — they’ll be rolled into Performance Max campaigns.
And, agencies participating in the Google Partner Program should also mark their calendars for February 2022, when the program’s requirements are set to change.
After more than a decade leading Microsoft Advertising, Rik van der Kooi, the platform’s corporate vice president, announced his departure on Wednesday. Rob Wilk, vice president at Microsoft Advertising, will step up to lead the platform.
Why we care
van der Kooi’s departure signals the end of an era of leadership at Microsoft Advertising and the start of a new one. “[van der Kooi’s] leadership has been instrumental in Microsoft Advertising’s growth over the last 10+ years,” John Lee, head of evangelism at Microsoft Advertising, told Search Engine Land.
“The decision to promote Rob Wilk into the leadership role is significant for continuity and the ongoing success of the Microsoft Advertising business [and] platform,” Lee said, adding, “In short, Microsoft Advertising is in a very good place with growth and momentum for the future.”
Additionally, new leadership often brings change, which may affect many (if not all) advertisers on Microsoft’s platform. It’s not clear what changes Wilk will make, but it’s something marketers should expect in 2022.
More on the news
Rob Wilk has led Microsoft Advertising’s global strategic sales team for the last six years and has more than 25 years of advertising and media experience. Prior to working at Microsoft, he was the vice president of sales at Foursquare.
Beginning this month, advertisers can serve text ads from Spanish ad groups in the U.S. on all devices and publishers, Microsoft Advertising announced Tuesday. The company also announced updates to the Microsoft Audience Network, including support for Video Ads and Feed Ads in the Audience Network Planner and the ability to choose between CPC or CPM pricing.
Advertisers can set Spanish as the ad group language or set the campaign settings as Spanish and leave the Language option blank. Image: Microsoft Advertising.
Why we care. There is a large demographic of Spanish speakers in the United States. Being able to deliver your messaging in the right language and target those users may help you expand your reach, which could mean more conversions.
Additionally, support for Video and Feed Ads in the Audience Network Planner can help you get a better overview of your potential audience while planning your campaigns across more ad formats. And, CPM pricing is a nice option to have for advertisers that are looking to increase their reach and brand awareness.
Spanish language ads. Any campaign that has Spanish selected as the language can now serve in the United States. Spanish language ads serve when the user self-identifies as Spanish-speaking or the query is in Spanish.
Microsoft offered the following recommendations for advertisers just starting out with Spanish language ads:
Separate your Spanish and English ad copies into different ad groups and choose the corresponding language at the ad group level.
Create Spanish extensions for your Spanish ad group.
Bid boost for your Spanish ad groups, or have a higher base bid, so that your Spanish ad can be shown over your English ad.
For branded campaigns, Microsoft recommends keeping the same keywords in both ad groups. For non-branded campaigns, the company recommended choosing the appropropriate keywords for each corresponding ad group. All other settings (automated bidding, targeting, etc.) should be kept the same.
Audience Network Planner extends support to Video and Feed Ads. In addition to Image Ads, the Audience Network Planner now supports Video Ads and Feed Ads as well.
CPM pricing is now available. First announced in October, advertisers on the Microsoft Audience Network can now specify a maximum amount they’re willing to pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM). CPC pricing remains available, should you want to switch between the two bidding strategies.
Microsoft Audience Ads are now available to all customers in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela, the company announced Tuesday. Prior to this update, this native ad product was only available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the UK.
Why we care
Microsoft Audience Ads appear on the Microsoft Audience Network, which includes sites like MSN, Outlook.com, Microsoft Edge and other Microsoft Advertising partners. Now that the Microsoft Audience Network can reach more audiences around the world, it’s more useful to more advertisers.
