Microsoft Debuts Multimedia Ads For Search

Microsoft Advertising today announced a responsive ad format that combines images, headlines and descriptions using machine learning. The goal is to give search marketers more visuals to help them draw the attention of those searching for products and services to the page.

The ad unit -- multimedia ads -- will serve up on Bing.com. Microsoft Advertising said it will only serve one ad per page on the main line at the top of the SERP or on the right rail.

The ad unit is not available to all advertisers, but Microsoft plans to test and roll out the feature to all soon. 

Future features will include better experiences with rich formats, such as video, multimedia ads for retail combined with product feeds, CPM-based auto bidding strategies, and additional import opportunities of rich media assets from other ad platforms.

This beta includes auto-recommendations for building ads. Understanding the amount to bid on can become challenging when working with a new ad format, so Microsoft set a 40% bid modifier as the default setting. The ability to use positive bid adjustment settings can help Multimedia Ads get more visibility without affecting performance of other ad types, according to Microsoft.

In addition to the auto-bid feature, this rollout focuses on the ability to automatically create ads with existing assets such as images and text to help advertisers get started. Recommendations use artificial intelligence (AI). Marketers have seven days to apply or dismiss recommendations.

Marketers can opt out of the auto-apply function, but not responding to the opt-out will automatically default to the feature.

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