Microsoft Advertising Announces Major Releases for September 2024

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This September 2024, Microsoft Advertising rolls out a number of key enhancements aimed at driving efficiency, relevance, and accessibility in your advertising campaigns. Continuing to improve with AI, retail media, and so much more, the new features will provide increased flexibility and control for advertisers.

Enhanced Display and Video Ads

One of the major renovations that happened in September was the enhancement of display and video ads. With new bidding strategies, targeting options, and conversion tracking at your fingertips, one can now utilize their campaigns all the way from top to bottom funnel. And this additional flexibility brings with it more focused targeting and even better results.

Native Ads with Logos and Call to Actions

Microsoft Advertising also gave way to the ability for advertisers to add business logos along with the call-to-action button to native ads. This increases engagement with better brand visibility and makes users’ lives easier because now they can have more interactions with your ad. The automated call-to-actions can be selected or imported from Google.

IAS Verification Across All Ad Formats

As part of its continuous coverage to ensure brand safety and quality of ads, Microsoft Advertising extended support for IAS verification to all ad formats. This includes viewability, brand safety, and invalid traffic verification for native, display, and video ads, regardless of the bid strategy used.

Making Connected TV More Accessible

Microsoft Advertising is deeply committed to democratizing CTV advertising for businesses of all sizes. Several updates have been made that support this commitment:

• Longer Video Ads: Advertisers can now create and run video ads in 45- and 75-second formats, catering to new pharma regulations while offering more creative flexibility across all industries.
• AI-Driven Creative Suggestions: Microsoft AI technologies can now also be used to help advertisers build ad creatives for CTV. Using your existing assets, the AI builds video-ready ads that are backed to drive better performance.

Performance Max Updates

Microsoft Advertising has continued working on refining its Performance Max campaign type, which offers a fully automated approach to campaign management. Key updates include:

• SA360 Support: Performance Max campaigns imported from Google are now fully supported, continuing seamlessly without additional effort from advertisers.
• Search Term Insights: Advertisers will have deeper insights about the search terms driving their campaign performance.
• Search Themes: Search themes pilot has been launched; these help optimize campaigns during the learning phase.

New Bid Strategy

Portfolio bidding also features a new bid strategy for capturing high-value conversions. Max Conversion value automatically helps a campaign to maximize the total sales value it generates by bidding on those conversions that will drive the most revenue.

Why These Updates Matter

These September 2024 updates are important to advertisers as they introduce the following advantages:

• Increased Engagement: Enabling the capability of logos and call-to-action buttons in native ads improves user engagement and conversions.
• Better Performance: New bidding strategies, targeting options, and conversion tracking tools give more flexibility for optimization of campaign performance.
• Better Brand Safety: IAS verification across all ad formats keeps brands safe from showing up on inappropriate or low-quality websites.
• Accessible CTV Advertising: The expanded CTV offerings make this powerhouse medium approachable for businesses of every size.
• Ease in Managing Campaigns: Updates to Performance Max make it easier to manage campaigns and unlock meaningful insights.

The Future of Advertising: Microsoft Advertising September 2024 Updates

Microsoft Advertising updates that went live in September 2024 are a game-changing moment in digital advertising. Bringing in enhanced display and video ads, native ads, CTV advertising, and Performance Max campaigns, Microsoft has armed advertisers with the most robust and efficient way to reach target audiences.

They will, for example, expand the possibilities of CTV advertising by allowing them to create longer versions of video ads using AI-powered creative recommendations. This means more ways for advertisers to keep reaching audiences on the big screen. Advertisers use CTV with increasing frequency, and Microsoft is making it easier and more powerful.

It isn’t far behind for Performance Max campaigns, though-they also receive considerable attention in the September updates. The fact that SA360 supports, provides insight into search terms, and search themes shows that Microsoft is committed to providing more power to advertisers in optimizing their campaigns for maximum results. Such a new bid strategy of portfolio bidding will be invaluable to any advertiser who values high-value conversions.

Equally impressive are the updates that have been carried out on display and video ads. New bidding strategies, targeting options, and conversion tracking tools give advertisers more flexibility and control over their campaigns. By tailoring their ad to specific audiences and measuring their performance more accurately, advertisers can enhance their ROI and drive conversions.

Native ads were also powered by adding a logo and call-to-action button. This absolutely made native ads more viewable and interactive; hence, the possibility of engagement and click-through rate would increase. Adding the capability of importing call-to-action buttons from Google further simplifies this process for advertisers.

Another milestone has been the integration of IAS verification across all ad formats. Microsoft Advertising does this to make sure ads are serving on brand-safe and viewable inventory, which helps protect advertisers’ brands and maximize their ad spend.

While there are some specific updates listed above, there is also a general feeling of attainment with the inclusion of AI and machine learning in the overall latest features for Microsoft Advertising. From campaign optimization to creative content creation, several AI-powered tools are being used to carve out value by way of insight. This is not a trend that is going away anytime soon, as this technology gets more and more advanced.

With the continuous evolution in the digital advertising landscape, Microsoft Advertising continues to be in a great position to continue being one of the leading actors. Innovation, plus a focus on providing advertisers with what they need to succeed, are key reasons for this.

But that is not all, as the September 2024 updates are only the beginning in terms of what Microsoft Advertising has in store. The company is continuing to invest in research and development, so more exciting advancements can be expected.

Sources:

• https://searchengineland.com/microsoft-advertising-september-product-roundup-446226
• https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/september-2024/audience-ads-releases-and-other-updates-for-september
• https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/resources/discover/webcasts/microsoft-advertising-product-round-up
• https://searchengineland.com/microsoft-ads-google-conversion-goal-imports-443000

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