Microsoft Creates Bing App-Linking Team, Looks To Boost Location Targeting, Ad Scheduling

Microsoft will make location targeting and ad scheduling improvements to Bing Ads based on feedback from brands using the tools. While the updates are part of the company's ongoing commitment to making Bing Ads easy and effective for advertisers, the real news comes from the company's job board -- where it describes an app linking and task completion team that will work on new ways to index content in apps and across the Web.

The move is part of a push to build a new features for Microsoft Bing such as the team, which will explore ways to discover and index services on the Web and within native apps, and to understand the intents of services and actions through machine learning and Big Data analysis techniques.

The team also will work on app-to-app deep linking, shipping task completion features for Bing, Cortana and Bing search apps; and the detection of task intents from user queries and contexts, per Microsoft's job board.

There's no indication that Microsoft will slow the rate of service releases. The long list of open job posts describes an Applied Researcher to support research and development of all Bing's algorithmic components in its advertising technology stack, user query intent, relevance modeling, personalization, and more. It's one of many openings worldwide to support changes coming to Bing.

As for the most recent Bing Ads released, the advanced location-targeting option focuses on allowing marketers to target campaigns or ad groups based on intent -- and their location in the query, rather than physical location. Piyush Naik, program manager for Bing Ads, explains: "if you are a hotel owner in Dallas, you can select this option to serve your ads only to users searching for Dallas hotels, but not physically located in Dallas."

The changes also allow marketers to schedule paid-search advertisements in 15-minute increments, with the ability to set bid adjustments for groupings; and ZIP code targeting and exclusion in the United States, with other regions coming soon. The change to ZIP code targeting also increases the number of location targets per campaign and ad group to 10,000.

Bing also made improvements to radius targeting. The controls improved in July help marketers see the visual outlines of the targeted areas on a map. The platform adds geolocation report, better location and intent-based targeting, and city level targeting.

"Target" photo from Shutterstock.

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