Microsoft Advertising Quarter Two Update - June

Hello,

It’s time for my monthly newsletter! As we approach the end of June, Microsoft's fiscal year is drawing to a close. Despite this, the company continues to drive forward with an array of exciting innovations and products that are eagerly anticipated in the pipeline. Today’s newsletter will cover:

    Microsoft Advertising Expansion

   Summer Sales Insights

   New Pilots

Microsoft Advertising Expansion
From 130 to 187 markets

In 2022, we expanded globally by launching 130 new markets. Now, we're thrilled to announce the next wave of our expansion, introducing Microsoft Advertising to 23 additional markets. These include 14 in Asia Pacific, 3 in the Americas, and 6 in Africa. The new countries open for advertising are Antigua and Barbuda, Central African Republic, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guadeloupe, Guinea-Bissau, Mayotte, Nauru, Niue, Norfolk Island, Palau, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna. We've expanded Microsoft Advertising from 34 to 187 markets in the past 18 months, reaching more customers and audiences worldwide.

This not only means we are reaching more customers but also more audiences than ever. We offer Country One Pages, if available market data. Please reach out to me if you are interested in any specific market. This can be an impactful added value to your international expansion strategy and pitches. The language option give you control over the campaign and user experience. For more information regarding the 35 languages check here:

About language options in Microsoft Advertising

Summer Sales Insights
Expected peak in July for Apparel, Beauty & Electronics
With rising temperatures and the arrival of summer in Europe, the Insights Team has diligently prepared the Retail Summer Sales trend analysis. This report encompasses various key aspects such as top products, search trends, forecasted growth, and more. The data predominantly centers around three prominent retail verticals: Apparel, Beauty & Personal Care, and Consumer Electronics.

Let´s have a look at the insights for GERMANY.

Consumers are ready to hit the retail stores for summer sales and searches should start to ramp in June. Hybrid shopping models will be key, businesses should offer both in-store and online experiences this summer.

Top Performing Products last summer were :

• Hair Brushes + 150% YoY
• Backpacks & Utility bags +53% YoY
• Baby Clothing +39% YoY
• Sunglasses +26% YoY

Forecasted YoY growth for top categories, June- August:

Tip: Optimize your keywords to include discount terms, activate Shopping Ads, and use Remarketing to reach users who visited your site previously.

Please find the one pager for Germany attached. Additionally, I have insights ready for UK, US, FR, NL, please reach out if interested.

New Pilots & Launches

Pmax, CTV, UET Dashboard & RSA add-ons

Exciting pilots and betas are on the horizon for Microsoft Advertising, and we encourage you to join as a first-mover and bring your clients on board. Take advantage of this opportunity to be at the forefront of new developments and stay ahead in the advertising landscape.

Performance Max

We know you have been longing for it and we finally have a Pmax Pilot in closed beta.
Performance Max is a new campaign type that brings together the best automation features to simplify campaign management and boost performance. It optimizes ads to reach the right audience and achieve your advertising goals across the Microsoft Advertising Network. Instead of creating ads manually, you can save time by adding assets to your groups, and our AI will handle the rest. It selects the best assets and audiences for your ads, ensuring they grab the attention of potential customers.

Two requirements to set up Pmax Campaigns:
You must have Conversion goals setup with the Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag and/or offline conversion tracking. If you want to serve product ads in your Performance Max campaigns, you must have a Merchant Center store and an active product feed.

If you are interested in being part of the closed beta, let me know and I will handraise your advertisers. Please also check the help page for more information: About Performance Max campaigns (microsoft.com)

Video and Connected TV

Microsoft Advertising has an open beta for Video & Connected TV ads for the Audience Network to reach your audience, wherever they are watching. Engage with in-stream and outstream videos ads across Microsoft properties and publisher partner trough CTV and online video placements. You can combine the impact of video with the intent data in search, so you can use these signals to your brand in front of valuable audience.

Get your video assets ready! Let me know if you are interested and I will share more details on the set up and process.

New UET dashboard launch

MSA will introduce new website insights to Universal Event Tracking Tag called UET Insights. This valuable new feature will be added as a new dashboard in the UI and the best part of it no additional coding is required from the advertisers to benefit from the data. You’ll get a deeper understanding of your website’s performance and also enable Microsoft Advertising to optimise your ad performance more effectively via improved targeting, fraud detection, and reduced conversion loss.

The data collected is analysed and made available in near real-time on the UET dashboard. Advertisers retain control over UET Insights, with the ability to disable them if desired. If you decide to opt out any time after launch, you’ll be able to do this easily in the UET Dashboard within the UI.

Key data available on the platform's built-in dashboard includes:

• Total visits to your website and number of visits per page
• Session breakdown by country and device
• Quick backs (customers who stay on your website for just a few seconds)
• Time spent on your website
• Popular pages: Sorts the webpages tracked by your UET tag by number of page visits

The automatic roll-out is planned for later July. For more detailed information about this feature, visit our Help page or check the attached feature Guide.

Updates on Responsive Search Ads

MSA is using AI models to improve campaign set up, asset creation, maximize performance and much more. These two new add-ons will be generally available soon for Responsive Search Ads. If you wish to be an early adopter, please let me know to get you enabled for the pilot.

Auto-generated assets

This feature gives the option to enable auto-generated assets for RSA creating more relevant ads by leveraging the content form you website. This not only will scale your effort but also improve performance, such as higher CTR, conversation Rate and impressions.

Currently this feature is available globally in 10 languages. You can identify which headlines and descriptions have been auto-generated in the asset reporting.

Improved recommendation

This new feature will recommend AI-generated headlines and description for RSA. The recommendation are categorized and also include an explanation why it is recommended. You can choose and adopt various recommendation.

The goal is to have high-quality and diversified assets. This feature can be explored in 35 languages. You have full control of adoption, and it will have no impact on current RSA.

So, you might ask, what is the difference between the two features:

The auto-generated assets are created dynamically upon ad serving. Once auto-generated assets are enabled in campaign settings, no action needs to be taken to get these assets to serve.

Alternatively, improved recommendations for RSAs are visible in the ad creation workflow and they need to be accepted and added one by one. 

I hope you enjoyed this month’s newsletter.

Please reach out to us if you have any feedback, question or opportunities.

Best regards,

Your Microsoft Advertising Team