Microsoft Digs Into Commerce, Visual Search For Retail At NRF Conference

Microsoft Advertising announced that next week at the National Retail Federation conference in New York it will unveil its latest platforms for retailers — commerce marketing platform Microsoft PromoteIQ, and an onsite search product, Microsoft Bing for Commerce.

The assets from Microsoft's acquisition of PromoteIQ in August 2019 now allow retailers to build out and control their digital vendor marketing programs for brands selling on their sites.

Retailers can configure native ad placements and products through the dashboard, and customize programs, targeting and inventory for brand partners.

Brands running programs can log in to a white-labeled interface to see shopper behavior on the retailer’s website and use campaigns to influence behaviors and support the goals for their products with that retailer.

Office Depot, Kohl’s, Kroger, and Home Depot are among the retailers using the platform.

Home Depot reported that customer engagement rose 35% and promoted products grew by double-digits year-over-year since it launched with PromoteIQ in early 2019.

Microsoft Bing for Commerce includes product recommendations as well as visual search -- a medium that eMarketer claims U.S. internet users are most “excited” about, citing a 2019 study from ViSenze.

Visual search technology enables consumers to snap a picture of something and allows a visual search engine to direct them to a product page.

While the medium is still nascent, females at 4%, compared with males at 3% are most interested in using visual search, per the data.

Retailers can use Bing and Microsoft AI to enable consumers to search on their websites. This helps retailers and brands decipher the natural language of shoppers on their sites and create a shorter path between shoppers and the product they’re seeking. 

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