Dear Channel Partner, This is the last Newsletter from us for this year. As the year comes to an end, I wanted to personally thank you for being a valued part of the global Microsoft Advertising community, as a partner. We certainly look forward to more opportunities to collaborate in the future. 
| After Christmas tips & tricks | 
| MSA Universe & key products | 
| Trending blog posts | 
| ComScore share growth Bing |
Happy holidays – after Christmas
Facts and figures Every holiday season comes with a few unwanted gifts, which means that you'll see gift return volume go up. To help you prepare and plan for these returns, our insights team examined when searches for gift returns increase. Here's what they found: • “Returns” volume acceleration begins two days after Christmas on December 27, 2023. • Volume acceleration peaks on January 31, 2024. • Volume tapers off on February 14, 2024. They also found that gift-related searches in January this year were 40% higher than the average number of gift-related searches in September and October 2022, which are typically considered important holiday season preparation months. Additionally, gift-related searches in January 2023 resulted in a 12% higher number of clicks compared to those in September and October 2022. This indicates that people are likely to continue searching for and buying gifts in January, making it advisable not to turn off your holiday campaigns during this month. Microsoft Advertising universe Key products Microsoft Advertising went through a rebranding this year and new partnerships that extended the universe of Microsoft Advertising. In today’s world, we know that it’s not just what you’re building, developing, or selling that’s important- it’s equally important how you’re achieving your business results and who you choose to partner with to do so. Therefore, we have a updated pitch deck with the latest updates. The goal of this presentation is to introduce all clients to the new Microsoft Advertising brand and value proposition. If your clients are interested in getting started, here are some of our key products across different inventory types that are star products in the Microsoft Advertising universe. 
Product Updates
Keyword Planner & Pmax Keyword Planner  Keyword Planner is now available to all customers, and with more capabilities. Choosing keywords is one of the most important aspects of creating and maintaining a successful advertising campaign. But where to start? How do you identify the many possible keywords that describe your business? How much should you bid on those keywords to be competitive with other advertisers?
Keyword Planner can help answer all of these questions and more. Better yet, after identifying potential ad groups with keywords and finding the profitable bids, you can use Keyword Planner to directly save those keywords to your account. New feature guide Performance Max Microsoft Advertising Performance Max campaigns are currently available in open beta. Performance Max is an asset-focused campaign type that allows you to easily create and manage your campaigns, optimize ads to reach the right audience at the right time, and drive performance to meet advertising goals — across the entire Microsoft Advertising Network. Rather than manually creating ads one by one, you can save time by adding assets, such as text and images, to your asset groups and let us take care of the rest. Please find attached the updated feature guide, including FAQ. Trending blog posts Check them out! Transforming Search and Advertising with Generative AI Explore new opportunities to meet your customers where they are. Get familiar with Compare and Decide Ads, Ads for Chat API Partners, and Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform. Learn more > Following one year of Netflix Ads Microsoft Advertising is collaborating with Netflix and advertisers to offer a variety of formats and experiences to reach highly engaged audiences. Learn more > Microsoft Advertising partners with Snap Snap is now tapping the unique capabilities of Microsoft’s Chat Ads API to serve highly relevant Sponsored Links in their popular and highly engaging My AI chatbot within Snapchat. Learn more > Introducing Microsoft Advertising Network for retail Microsoft created a new advertising network which helps retailers quickly launch a retail media program. Learn more > Introducing Microsoft pubCenter Empowers small and medium-sized businesses to earn more from their website. Learn more> ComScore reports share growth Bing PC market share ComScore’s October 2023 data reveals a 0.7-point increase in market share for Microsoft search sites from the previous month, now accounting for over 27% of the Core Search universe in the US (PC-centric). We’re pleased to see our efforts in chat and generative AI validated by a third-party expert! Use this article as a reference when discussing our chat and generative AI investments with your clients. We hope these insights are helpful and wish you a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous new year. Please reach out to us if you have any feedback, question or opportunities. Best regards, Your Microsoft Advertising Team |