Microsoft Advertising updgrades AI Max for improved search visibility and Performance Max for smoother ad launch.
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a new set of updates including AI Max for search, Microsoft Clarity, and Performance Max.
In February, the firm launched AI Visibility in Microsoft Clarity to select customers and are now expanding access. These insights help users understand AI bot activities and citations, such as which web pages are referenced in AI-driven answers and how often.
Updates to AI Max include audience generation capabilities to improve campaign visibility and performance through expanded query matching, personalised ads and smarter URL routing.
Microsoft is also introducing direct purchases inside Copilot and new ad formats to enhance the agentic shopping experience.
The updates to Performance Max aim to make campaigns easier to migrate and manage, particularly for existing Google Ads users.
Advertisers can now import Google PMax campaigns which use new customer acquisition (NCA) goals. The update is now live for all advertisers.
Existing NCA goals won’t be overridden without Microsoft Advertising accounts, but Google Ads PMax campaigns will be input if not already present.
Audience lists are also getting upgrades – Google website visitors audience segments will be converted to equivalent rule-based remarketing lists in Microsoft Advertising.
Google’s auto-created ‘all visitors’ or ‘all converters’ lists will be measured to Microsoft Advertising’s corresponding lists, and if an NCA goal uses an unsupported list (such as customer match), advertisers will have the option to either use an ‘all converters’ list or import without an audience list created.
Microsoft runs on trust from its advertisers, which is “why we take a more conservative approach when identifying whether a customer is new or existing”, said Kevin Salat, product manager at Microsoft Advertising.
“For customers classified as unknown in a PMax NCA campaign, we treat them as existing customers to avoid potential inaccuracies.”
These updates will also bring landing page reporting for PMax users, which will give users full transparency for impressions, clicks, conversions, and spend metrics.
These can be segmented by asset group, campaign, or with custom parameters – making tracking and adjustments a more simple process.
Users can also apply seasonality adjustments, meaning events, which could bring significant but short-term changes in conversion rates like peak season, sales, sporting events, or major promotions. These will only be applicable for target return on adspend (tROAS) and target clicks-per-acquisition (tCPA) campaigns.
Microsoft is also introducing auto-generated assets in responsive search ads to optimise campaigns, which it says will “help continually produce fresh, relevant ad copy to their search ads that drive stronger performance”. This excludes sensitive industries and advertisers can opt out through campaign settings.
These updates are primarily aimed at removing friction from PMax campaign building, with easy transferability from previous campaigns.
