Microsoft Advertising has detailed four new consumer personas that represent changes in how marketers reach and relate to their audiences across verticals. The personas (luxury shopper, digital nomads, empowered activists and self-care enthusiasts) were identified via Microsoft’s first-party data and analytics over the last 18 months.

Luxury shoppers. This persona was primarily an in-store audience, but they increased in numbers at the outset of the pandemic as luxury retail locations closed. Even though physical locations have largely re-opened, the luxury shopper persona has remained, signifying a permanent consumer behavior shift.

Luxury shoppers “value quality and seek ways to make everyday items more luxurious,” Stephanie Worley, global brand marketer at Microsoft Advertising, wrote, “Their preference for luxury extends into expecting the same seamless, personalized shopping experience in online service as they would receive in-store.” They’re also thorough, conducting extensive research and using multiple queries to find brands that meet their standards. You can learn more about the luxury shopper persona from Microsoft’s study of first-party data for recent luxury shopping trends.

Digital nomads. Remote work became mainstream when offices closed last year. This location-independent audience works while traveling. “The behavior is so prominent, an entire industry is springing up around them,” Worley said, “One example is RVShare, one of the first RV rental marketplaces that nomads are excited about.”

As shoppers, this group uses online research across verticals as much or more than any other group: They’re regularly looking for housing and transportation, as well as the needs, services and amenities that go along with life on the road. They use mobile devices, change locations frequently and the search terms they use make them a viable target for numerous verticals, such as travel products, grocery and dining, entertainment, housing and transportation.

Empowered activists. This audience votes with their wallet, purchasing primarily from brands that align with their ethics and values, which might include stances on the environment, diversity and/or small business brands.

Marketing messages that resonate with their beliefs are more likely to have an impact on this group. They’re also more likely to be interested in and search for political, environmental and/or social issues.

Self-care enthusiasts. The anxiety, stress and fear of the pandemic, combined with uncertainty from political and social upheaval, has led some consumers to turn to self-care for relief. Thus, mental and physical health are a priority for this group.

“Self-Care Enthusiasts are masters at switching between work and life during the day,” Worley said, “Because of this, they expect to get information quickly and to have a seamless digital experience across multiple devices.” They’re often searching for fitness ideas, diet tips, ways to manage their professional and personal lives and leisure activities in their hybrid work-life reality.

Why we care. Identifying what’s important for your target audience is crucial to creating products, services and messaging that actually resonates with them. Their behavior is a reflection of their priorities and showing them that your brand supports those priorities can mean more opportunities to convert.

The emerging personas that Microsoft Advertising has identified were born out of the disruption consumers experienced since the start of the pandemic. If brands are able to demonstrate that their products and values are evolving with the needs of their audiences, they may also be able to extract more customer lifetime value from them.

The post Four new personas are changing how marketers reach and relate to customers, according to Microsoft Advertising appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Beginning June 30, 2022, responsive search ads (RSAs) will be the only search ad type that can be created or edited in standard search campaigns, Microsoft Advertising announced in its October product updates on Tuesday. The announcements also included reporting improvements for Microsoft Audience Ads with view-through conversions, In-market Audiences expansions, an open beta for auto-generated remarketing lists, several Microsoft Audience Network updates and expansions and more.

Sunsetting ETAs

As stated above, starting on June 30, 2022, advertisers will only be able to create or edit RSAs in standard search campaigns. Existing expanded text ads (ETAs) will continue to serve, but advertisers will not be able to edit or add them.

This move brings Microsoft Advertising in line with Google Ads, which announced in August that it would sunset ETAs on the same date (June 30, 2022).

Microsoft Audience Network updates and expansions

Feed improvements. Now, advertisers can filter their feed by ID and category, enter multiple values at once and exclude values. This may enable advertisers to more easily manage their feed-based campaigns and filter with more granularity.

Introducing CPM pricing. CPM pricing (cost-per-thousand impressions) is coming to standalone audience campaigns targeting users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, France, Germany, or New Zealand.

If this feature isn’t available in your account yet, contact Microsoft Advertising’s support team or reach out to your account representative.

New metrics for view-through conversions. View-through conversions are conversions that customers make after seeing your ad, even though they did not click on your ad. Microsoft has added four new view-through conversion types:

• View-through conversion rate: This is the number of view-through conversions divided by the number of impressions.
• View-through conversion CPA: This is the total amount you have spent divided by the number of view-through conversions.
• View-through conversion revenue: This is your conversion revenue, but only for view-through conversions.
• View-through conversion ROAS: This is your view-through conversion revenue divided by your total ad spend.

18 new markets. The Microsoft Audience Network is expanding to include the following new markets: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela.

Microsoft Audience Ads are already available in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany.

In-market Audiences expansion

The regions that In-market Audiences are available in is also expanding to include, as an open beta: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Segments have been expanded as well; advertisers can view the list of In-market Audiences at Microsoft Advertising’s help center.

Auto-generated remarketing lists open beta

Microsoft Advertising is introducing a new product that can automatically generate remarketing lists for advertisers. The three types of auto-generated remarketing lists are:

• All Visitors list: A list of users who visited the advertiser’s website in the past 30 days.
• All Converters list: A list of users who converted within the past 180 days.
• Smart Remarketing list: A list of users likely to convert, powered by Microsoft Advertising’s audience intelligence and designed to deliver a higher conversion rate.

Advertisers can use one, two or all three lists simultaneously, along with their existing remarketing and audience targeting lists. Universal Event Tracking and active conversion goals will need to be configured to leverage the All Converters and Smart Remarketing list options.

Competitive insights at the multi-account level

The platform also announced that competitive insights are now available at the multi-account level.

Why we care

The deprecation of ETAs aligns Microsoft Advertising with Google Ads, making it easier for advertisers to work across both platforms without having to account for any differences in available search ad types. As we stated when Google first made this announcement, this move means that advertisers will have less direct control over their accounts and will have to get accustomed to working with Google and Microsoft’s machine learning, if they haven’t already. We recommend testing your ETAs and RSAs to figure out what works best well before the June 30, 2022 deadline.

Feed improvements may make it easier to filter through your campaigns to find the products you want to promote exclude the ones you don’t. CPM pricing may be a useful option for advertisers that prioritize ad impressions, such as those seeking to increase their brand awareness. The new view-through conversion metrics may help advertisers track how ad impressions affect their conversion rate, CPA, revenue and/or ROAS.

And, auto-generated remarketing lists may provide advertisers with a quick option to expand their remarketing efforts to various users who’ve already interacted with their brand or are likely to convert.

The post Microsoft Advertising: ETA deprecation, auto-generated remarketing lists and Audience Network updates appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Microsoft Advertising has introduced Credit card ads as an open beta, the company announced Tuesday. Credit card ads will become available this week to advertisers targeting customers in the U.S. and Canada. Over the last six months, the company has also launched ad formats specifically for the travel and leisure and automotive sectors.

Where and when Credit card ads can appear. Credit card ads appear on the right rail of Bing search results and run alongside mainline text ad placements. These ads can trigger for queries like brand name, card category and credit level.

How Credit card ads work. Credit card ads are dynamically generated based on advertisers’ data feeds. The feed file should contain business data like the card issuer, annual fee and any sign-up bonuses. Keywords are not required and Microsoft Advertising does not need to crawl your site to generate content for this ad format.

How to get started. To register for the open beta, contact your Microsoft Advertising representative or enroll at this link.

Why we care. This format may be useful for credit card advertisers, like banks, brands and comparison sites, to showcase their promotions. They may also offer increased efficiency for this particular segment of advertisers: “In early flights of Credit card ads, advertisers so far have seen 70% lower cost per acquisition,” Microsoft said.

From an industry standpoint, Microsoft Advertising is on a streak of launching vertical-specific, feed-based products that are unique to the company — in addition to Credit card ads, the company has rolled out open betas for Tours and Activities ads and Automotive ads over the last six months. The platform’s strategy of appealing to advertisers with automated ad formats tailored specifically to their industry may help it achieve wider adoption and increase its market share.

The post Microsoft Advertising’s new Credit card ads continue its streak of vertical-specific products appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search marketing has a diversity problem. Older data from the American Marketing Association shows that most marketing leadership is still majority white, hetero, and male. Meanwhile, the audiences we’re marketing to are more diverse and inclusive than ever. It’s a topic we’ve covered multiple times at Search Engine Land:

• The onus of diversity should not fall to Black marketers
• What does commitment to diversity look like in an organization?
• How inclusion can lead to diversity in marketing and communications
• The business imperative behind inclusion and diversity

But it’s not one and done. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are ongoing efforts and something we need to commit to every day. This is why we’re excited to announce the second annual Search Engine Land Award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing to celebrate those individuals or organizations who are affecting real change.

We’re elated to announce that this year’s awards will include a guest judge, last year’s winner Areej AbuAli, a pillar in the SEO community and the founder of Women in Tech SEO.

You may nominate as many organizations or individuals as you feel deserve the recognition. We ask that you highlight specific initiatives conducted by the nominee and that in the nomination form you include the contact of someone who can “second” that nomination.

Nominate a person or organization now.

The post Second annual Search Engine Land Award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing: Nominations open appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, I spent last week in a cabin near the woods in New York.

The lack of distraction gave me time to think about some of the things that are holding me back, so I thought I’d share one with you: While on a hike, I found myself frustrated because we had been lost for some time. Apparently, that’s a given when you go hiking in a new area, but that wasn’t of much comfort to me. I couldn’t shake the need for progress, even though “progress” wasn’t the point of the hike.

The next day, I wrote “permission to change” in my notepad (read: diary). It’s to remind me that the next decision doesn’t have to be related to the previous circumstance or emotion. I didn’t need to continue to be frustrated just because I was already frustrated. Likewise, the way you do your job, teach your kids, communicate with your partner and so on doesn’t have to be dictated by your history — especially the negative patterns that may pepper that history.

It’s a cliché to say you can change whenever you want. I think you have to give yourself that permission to change and tell yourself it’s okay to try something new, which can be scary and may require some vulnerability.

Now, back to all the search marketing news you need to get your day started.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Google News app will display non-AMP content and send readers to publisher pages

As part of the page experience update, Google News will be displaying both AMP and non-AMP web content, the company announced in an email to publishers. The platform will no longer render article text from RSS feeds in the Google News app; instead, it will send readers directly to publishers’ webpages.

Why we care. We’ve known for some time that the Top Stories carousel would be open to non-AMP content, but now we know the same will go for the Google News app. The AMP requirement for Google News may have been a barrier for some publishers, but now that it’s going by the wayside, those publishers may want to get their content onto the platform to attract more readers potentially.

And, as Google stated in the announcement, the Google News performance reports in Search Console are unaffected, and your ability to track and measure traffic from Google News remains unchanged.

Read more here.

SEO tools among those marketers replaced last year

In a year when digital engagement became paramount, can you believe some marketers ripped and replaced search marketing tools? It’s true. About 16% of respondents to this year’s MarTech Replacement Survey said they replaced SEO Tools in the past year. While that’s a smaller proportion than those that said they replaced their marketing automation tools (24%), it sat right in the middle in the range of tools replaced. Get the full report here and grab your free pass to next week’s MarTech, when we’ll talk more about the results in detail.

See you at MarTech.

Microsoft Ads announces optimization score in Recommendations tab

Optimization Score is now available on the Recommendations tab in Microsoft Ads, according to the latest announcement from the company. The new scoring system helps improve advertisers’ account optimization status and potential, help advertisers spend their time more efficiently and to prioritize the optimization actions with higher impact, and track their optimization efforts over time. 

To check Optimization Score in Microsoft Ads, visit the Recommendations page in Microsoft Advertising. “You’ll see a percentage score in blue (see below). Each category of recommendations is shown with an aggregated score uplift from the recommendations belonging to it, and each recommendation is indicated with a score uplift in an ellipse on the top right of the card with a value from 0.1% to 100%, representing its estimated impact on your account or campaign performance,” wrote Cui and Ventura. If you apply or dismiss a recommendation, your score will adjust accordingly.

Read more here.

63% of consumers say incorrect information on a business listing would stop them from choosing that business

A BrightLocal study of 1,141 US-based consumers found that, over the last 12 months, 76% of consumers said they have arrived at a business too early or too late because its opening hours were wrong online. An even greater proportion (77%) said that they found conflicting information on business information sites.

Why we care. Inaccurate business information has become alarmingly common since the pandemic began, and the newly established prevalence only adds to the frustration for customers. The study also found that 63% of consumers would be deterred from using a business if their listing contained inaccurate information. That’s a huge proportion of potential customers that your local business could be opening itself up to by simply maintaining accurate details across the platforms that audiences use to find them. 

I’m not crying…someone must be cutting some Brand Onions…

Your “Brand Onion.” “The Brand Onion rarely passes the ‘Factory Floor Test’ — could you share it outside of the Marketing Ivory Tower without being laughed out of the room?” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne, “The strongest business communication is just plain English.” 

20% of Bing results offer direct answers.  A Financial Times article (that was mainly about Google’s MUM) from a few weeks ago reads: “The ability to extract answers from text has already enabled Bing to offer direct answers to 20% of the queries it gets, according to Ribas.” Jordi Ribas is the CVP of search and AI at Microsoft Bing, and it sounds like he’s saying that Bing serves direct answers for 20% of all queries conducted on Bing. Tip of the hat to Glenn Gabe for bringing this to our attention.

Start is Microsoft’s answer to Apple News, Google News. Microsoft Start is the company’s new, personalized news portal. It’s available as both a website and mobile app. Readers can provide feedback on the personalization algorithm via a thumbs up/down or manually add/remove interests. It’s ad-supported and began rolling out on Tuesday. Now, the questions are: Will Microsoft be able to attract users? And, will it provide value for publishers?

Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” tech is coming to Whole Foods

Amazon is testing technology that enables shoppers to walk right out of some Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores in two Whole Foods locations: Washington DC and Sherman Oaks, California.

This is the first time a major grocery chain is implementing this type of solution. Although it’s a long way away from getting adopted in most convenience stores, this trial will likely provide some critical takeaways for local businesses.

For example, how will consumers react to the new workflow, which requires them to sign in with an app? Chances are it’ll go well for Whole Foods, which has a cashback app integrated with its parent company. But, other grocery store chains may not have a customer base that’s used to opening an app every time they walk in. Also, how will employee count be affected? Will employees need to be re-trained for other duties?

Amazon has licensed its “Just Walk Out” technology to third-party retailers. If the company can demonstrate that it improves the customer experience, it might compel local businesses to give it a try. Perhaps that will afford local business owners more time to provide better customer service or simply find other ways to improve their business.

The post Incorrect business listings deter 63% of consumers; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Optimization Score is now available on the Recommendations tab in Microsoft Ads, according to the latest announcement from the company. The new scoring system is meant to help improve advertisers’ account optimization status and potential, help advertisers spend their time more efficiently and to prioritize the optimization actions with higher impact, and track their optimization efforts over time.

“Along with the overall Optimization Score, you’ll see a list of recommendations tailored specifically for your account, to help you optimize each campaign. Each recommendation displays a score uplift percentage, showing how much your optimization score will be impacted when you apply or dismiss that recommendation. Optimization Score is available at Account and Campaign level, and is shown for active Search, Shopping and Audience campaigns,” said Jessica Cui, Principal Program Manager and Cristiano Ventura Sr. Product Marketing Manager.

How to check Optimization Score in Microsoft Ads. Visit the Recommendations page in Microsoft Advertising. “You’ll see a percentage score in blue (see below). Each category of recommendations is shown with an aggregated score uplift from the recommendations belonging to it, and each recommendation is indicated with a score uplift in an ellipse on the top right of the card with a value from 0.1% to 100%, representing its estimated impact on your account or campaign performance,” wrote Cui and Ventura. If you apply or dismiss a recommendation, your score will adjust accordingly.

How is Optimization Score calculated? Microsoft Advertising looks at multiple aspects of a campaign: bidding and budgets, keywords and targeting, and ads and extensions. From there it determines if these features are fully optimized and displays recommendations for full optimization. “The recommendation is evaluated by its impact to your performance: the more performance impact from the recommendation, the greater effect on your overall score,” according to the announcement.

How to improve your scores. Any recommendation can be applied or dismissed. “You can see the total score achieved from the dismissed recommendations, showing as the light blue portion of the percentage bar. For example, if you apply or dismiss a recommendation that has a score uplift of 10%, your account’s optimization score increases by 10%. Applying or dismissing all recommendations can get you to 100% for your account,” said Microsoft Ads.

Why we care. Google has had optimization scores and the ability to apply or dismiss for a while now. This means Microsoft Advertisers will have a similar experience in the competitor platform. The availability of Optimization Score in Microsoft Ads now means advertisers have the option to ensure they understand all of the recommendations and consider options they may not have before.

The post Microsoft Ads announces optimization score appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, are we doing the work or going through the motions?

My friend and I were taking a walk around our coworking space just to get some fresh air and reset our brains before afternoon calls. We both park in a deck down the road because the parking lot right outside the office is 3-hours only. However, the handicapped spaces directly outside the space are all-day parking. At first, I thought that was pretty cool. Good for this space for being accessible, I thought, and for not making people who use wheelchairs park in the parking deck far away. 

And then I looked at the entrances right outside these parking spots and noticed the ramp was nowhere close. Then I thought about the actual space and how I think I’ve only ever seen one elevator — which is on the other side of the building to the parking spaces.

Just like in life, accessibility on our sites can’t be an afterthought. We’ve been working on an accessibility audit of Search Engine Land, and we encourage you to think about doing the same as you plan your 2022 goals. It can’t just be an afterthought. We have to do the actual work. With the increased focus on user experience in SEO, we need to make sure our sites have a positive experience for all users.

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

3 sessions search marketers will want to see at MarTech

How are we handling the data challenge?
MarTech Editorial Director Kim Davis’s keynote explores the importance of data to modern marketing with experts from major brands like HBO Max and El Camino Health.

Guiding company influencers and evangelists to successfully engage on LinkedIn
Join Darryl Praill, CRO at VanillaSoft, as he explains how he interacts on LinkedIn, who he responds to, who he completely ignores and why.

Is your brand ready for the search-first age?
Deepcrawl shows why CMOs need to shift from being search-shy marketers to become search-first CMOs.

Get your free pass now.

Video and vertical-based product ads pilots arrive on Microsoft Audience Network

Video ads and vertical-based product ads are now being piloted on the Microsoft Audience Network, Microsoft announced yesterday. In the announcement, the company also revealed disclaimers in ads, new third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking, flexible insertion orders and inline appeals for rejected offers in Microsoft Merchant Center.

Why we care. While unlikely to be game-changing, Microsoft Advertising’s September announcements offer a variety of quality-of-life improvements for paid search marketers:

• Microsoft Audience Network’s new video format may help brands increase awareness as well as engagement with their ads.
• Disclaimers in ads may help advertisers in regulated industries stay compliant.
• Inline appeals may help decrease the amount of time your team spends reaching out to Microsoft Advertising’s support team. This can be especially useful for resolving rejections during the holiday shopping season, a crucial time of the year for many merchants.
• The new UET integrations may mean a simpler setup process for event tracking.
• Flexible insertion orders may provide advertisers with a more versatile way to manage their budgets.

Read more here.

81% of B2B tech marketers believe the importance of SEO has increased in the last 12 months

SEO budgets in B2B have reflected this increase in importance as over a quarter of B2B tech companies have increased their investment in SEO in the past year, according to data from FINITE, the global B2B technology marketing community.

However, with the increased emphasis on SEO and budgets related to it, only half of B2B tech has an SEO strategy. The report also found that most of the SEO efforts in this industry are being performed in-house: “Only 28% of B2B tech marketers rely on third parties to help with their SEO strategies.”

Attribution is a challenge even outside this industry, but FINITE’s data found that nearly half of all B2B tech marketers struggle to measure the impact of organic search. What were the other big challenges for the respondents?

• technical SEO (38%),
• link building (21%) and 
• content creation (21%)

Why we care. This information could help agency and in-house marketers looking to make the move to B2B tech/SaaS. Even more companies are seeing the value in organic search optimization, but are missing out on strategy and implementation best practices. Knowing this can help search marketers craft proposals and help these companies hone in on the best ways to improve their SEO.

Search Shorts: End of ETAs #PPCChat, reducing churn, and stats in content

#PPCChat on RSAs and ETAs. Check out the advice, thoughts, and reactions from the experts in yesterday’s #PPCChat about the end of ETAs.

3 ways to reduce customer churn with content marketing. No matter how large they are, even multinational corporations aren’t immune to customer churn. But there’s a way to retain customers – and it all starts with content marketing.

Truth or Dare: How to use statistics in your content. Statistics actually have the power to make your content more engaging and compelling. When you use them the right way, statistics can help you tell an even better story than you could with words alone.

What We’re Reading: The secret to happiness at work

Job satisfaction is up, according to this piece in The Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks. “In 2020, despite the fact that millions of Americans had shifted to remote work, 89 percent said they were either ‘completely’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied,” he wrote. Brooks teaches graduate classes and says his students often assume that, in order to love your job, it has to be your “dream” job: “one where your skills meet your passions, you make good money, and you are excited to get to work each day.” 

But, says Brooks, that’s not what drives satisfaction at work. “After all, how many kids say, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a quality-assurance analyst’?” And, how many of us knew we wanted to be search marketers when we were asked our future career aspirations as children? I think mine shifted from marine biologist to broadway star to writer as I got older. And here I am in search.

To really be satisfied with work, Brooks says your job needs two things:

1. Earned success. Earned success gives you a sense of accomplishment and professional efficacy. Employers who give clear guidance and feedback, reward merit, and encourage their employees to develop new skills are the most likely to give you those feelings.
2. Service to others. This is the sense that your job is making the world a better place. That doesn’t mean you need to volunteer or work for a charity to be happy, but that you’re helping make the world a better place for someone or making their life easier.

So what’s the secret to happiness at work? “Rather than relentlessly pursuing a ‘perfect match’ career that they’re sure will make them happy, a better approach is to remain flexible on the exact job, while searching for the values and culture that fit with theirs,” said Brooks.

The post New pilots from Microsoft Ads and the secret to happiness at work; Wednesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.