• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 7, 2024

Microsoft Performance Max rolled out in all markets on Thursday. Similar to Google’s ad platform by the same name, Microsoft’s version brings together all its ad services into one platform where artificial intelligence (AI) dynamically creates and optimizes ads across all Microsoft Advertising surfaces to improve performance.

Microsoft will offer the option sometime in the second quarter of 2024, joining other platforms such as Skai, and Adobe.

Some of the functions not yet available in Microsoft Performance Max but on the company's roadmap this year include costs per sale bidding strategy, video assets, experiments support, and forecasting tools.

Key features of the platform include Product Ads, Automated Bidding, Predictive Targeting, Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs), Multimedia Ads (MMAs), and much more.

In the Create asset group section, Marketers can associate a Microsoft Merchant Center store and save the Asset Group without adding any asset creatives. This lets marketers run a shopping-only Performance Max campaign.

Microsoft also allows marketers to import their Google Performance Max campaigns in a few clicks after ensuring they have the Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag in place with conversion tracking.

Microsoft also wants to make cross-border advertising easier. It’s latest feature, Feed Labels, debuted Thursday with a launch date of sometime in mid-March.

Feed Labels will allow advertisers to organize products from different feeds by using common traits like language or product category.

Microsoft said for those selling products the UK, France, and Germany, marketers can create a label for all three feeds. This label help marketers run ads in a targeted shopping campaign that will show products from all the feeds to potential customers in those markets.

The company also makes note that Feed Labels are different from custom labels, which are used to subdivide products within one feed based on the campaign’s criteria. Custom labels are useful for creating granular bid strategies and reporting in a campaign.