• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 7, 2020

Microsoft Digital Marketing Center (DCM), a Microsoft Garage project, has opened in beta in the U.S. The announcement, made Wednesday, expands on a pilot that the company designed for small and-medium-sized (SMB) businesses earlier this year.

The most important part of this announcement is that artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the backbone to the platform aimed at helping SMBs manage their digital marketing not only across Microsoft Advertising, but also advertising and social media platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

In July, Search & Performance Marketing Daily reported about Microsoft’s project that gives SMBs one place to manage all their campaigns from social to search, including Bing and Google.

Microsoft launched a limited pilot program in June.

As previously reported, AI manages most of the work without a need to toggle through multiple platforms.

There is no keyword or bid management needed. The platform creates multichannel ads with text, images and video. A budget optimization feature keeps investments in check. The platform also suggests images and autocompletes ad text.

Customer action tracking -- a new feature that helps measure how well advertisements perform -- allows marketers to track whether people complete specific actions on a brand’s website.

Brands can measure the action, for example, if a consumer purchases a product or becomes a lead for future business after clicking on an ad. With action tracking, you also get access to metrics like the time customers spend on the website, and the number of pages they visit after they click on your ads.

The platform also improves on visibility and control of search phrases -- specific words or phrases that people search for that surface ads across the Microsoft Search Network such as Bing, AOL, Yahoo, and Google.