Microsoft Advertising is introducing search matching, URL expansion, text customisation, and other new advertiser controls for search campaigns.
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out AI Max for search campaigns across the globe.
The announcement comes after several months of testing, through Navah Hopkins, Microsoft’s ad liaison, who said on LinkedIn: “We heard you that brand controls and reporting are critical to trusting AI as a partner in campaign management, which is why brand controls (including term exclusions for text asset generation), reporting, and choice are present from day one.”
This rollout follows an open pilot, which was released in April this year. As of this week, the feature suite including text customisation, URL expansion, and search matching will be generally available across Microsoft Advertising accounts.
Text customisation generates additional ad messaging through existing website content. The tool then selects the most relevant combinations at auction, which looks to help advertisers deliver more appropriate ad creative.
Search term matching will now expand beyond just an advertiser’s keyword list. Going forward, Microsoft Advertising users will be able to use keywords, ads, and landing pages, as well as contextual and intent signals to reveal relevant searches that might not be covered by current reach. This should also help marketers appear on and convert more complex conversational queries.
Final URL expansion will route audiences to the most relevant page to match their intent. Users will not just be sent to a static landing page, but instead land on the page which best suits the query, giving a more consistent user experience across creative, query, and website.
Hopkins added: “AI Max features are designed to work better together! We encourage you to test using all three and leveraging brand controls, URL rules, and ad group level settings to see the best results. You can test with confidence via optimisation experiments for all three AI Max features or individual ones.”
Hopkins also explained those already testing auto-generated text assets for search campaigns or predictive matching will be able to find those features in AI Max – and only these will be automatically turned on. Otherwise, AI Max will be an opt-in setting for new and existing campaigns.
