Tech giant Microsoft’s advertising platform, the Microsoft Audience Network, has announced several new features to benefit advertisers, along with its expansion into more countries.
Ability to import Facebook Ad campaigns
Similarly to the import feature available on Google Ads, Microsoft has confirmed that advertisers will be able to import their ad campaigns from Facebook. When launched (it’s currently undergoing beta testing), people will be able to import their campaigns that use a single-image format. To begin with, video ads and those using carousels won’t be supported.
While scheduling, demographics and locations will all be imported over into Microsoft Advertising, but people won’t be able to target their ads using interests or behaviours as they can do on Facebook. Instead, they will have the option of directing ads at their desired audiences using LinkedIn profile, in-market and affinity targeting, along with retargeting.
What’s the import process?
The process of importing Facebook Ad campaigns into the Microsoft Audience Network will work in a similar way to the importing process of Google Ads. Advertisers will have the option to choose Facebook from the import functionality and will then have to sign into their Facebook account.
Before the import takes place, advertisers will be able to update settings like budgets, bids and targeting. They can they choose to either conduct a single import or set up an import schedule. Per account, a total of 10,000 ad groups and campaigns can be imported from Facebook.
New video ad capabilities
Along with the Facebook importation feature, people will also be able to run video ads with Microsoft Advertising. These can be uploaded straight to the Microsoft platform and can be run on all sites on the Microsoft Audience Network, on both mobile and desktop devices.
The video ads can be no more than 120 seconds long, and all standard formats, such as MOV and MP4, will be accepted. Advertisers will also have the option to add new metrics to their reports to measure the ads’ performance, such as video views, video completion rate and average watch time per impression.
At present, video ads are undergoing pilot testing in the US, but Microsoft is set to open up beta testing soon.
Expansion of the Microsoft Audience Network
Currently, the network for advertising with Microsoft is only available in the UK and US, However, it’s been announced that it will soon be expanding into Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with testing also being conducted in Germany and France.
The expansion and new capabilities of Microsoft Advertising suggests that the tech giant is trying to entice more advertisers to use the network and establish itself among the likes of Google and Facebook as an online advertising powerhouse. If you’d like to have a chat about using online advertising for your business, talk to our team at Engage Web.
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