• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 22, 2022

Microsoft Advertising will make Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) the default beginning in April 2022, with dynamic or active descriptions -- whatever word marketers choose to use. The descriptions will become available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Advertisers can opt in to dynamic descriptions beginning today, but starting in April, all existing DSA campaigns will automatically migrate to dynamic descriptions. With the change, DSAs will become the default option for new campaigns.

The change means DSA campaigns will have the ability to dynamically generate both headlines and descriptions.

Microsoft Advertising added the ability to use static headlines for DSA in March 2021. Static headlines are an additional column that marketers can add to the Dynamic Search Ads page, which specifies the specific ad title to serve up for a particular URL in the page feed.

Advertisers in sensitive verticals such as pharmaceuticals can opt out for existing campaigns. Those affected by the change will be notified via email with instructions on how to opt out. 

For marketers who want to participate, in the DSA campaign settings marketers will see a checkbox that says “Enable dynamic search ad text.” Microsoft said these ads are continually optimized to provide the best messages to consumers.

It has been a busy week for Microsoft. On Monday, the company moved auto-apply recommendations out of beta and into generally availability. Advertisers by default are opted into all five of the platform’s recommendation types. This feature optimizes ad campaigns by automatically applying on of the five recommendations.

The five auto-reply recommendation types include Create Expanded Text Ads, Create Responsive Search Ads, Create Multimedia Ads, Remove Negative Keywords Conflicts, and Fix Conversion Goal Setting Issue.

Opting in will nor increase advertising budgets, but Microsoft encourages advertisers to continue to visit the recommendation page to ensure that performance is not constrained by budgetary limitations.

Advertisers also can opt in to email notifications that will alert them before the recommendations are automatically applied to an account. The email preference for “Ad performance optimization” should be switched on for all users responsible for managing the account, according to Microsoft.