• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 9, 2023

Microsoft Store Ads will now appear in Bing search results and will soon become available to all advertisers worldwide. The plan is to expand the service to 150 new regions.

The company announced Microsoft Store Ads, a product designed to help developers grow their business by getting apps or games in front of the right customers, at its conference Build 2022. Then, at this past Build conference, the company shared that in June the store would expand beyond the United States.

Advertisers will also have more options to reach customers with Premium Search Ads in the Microsoft Store and Bing.com search results.

Microsoft also plans to launch additional features to simplify processed for advertisers. Features such as Premium Search Ads created to offer a visual and prominent ad placement to help advertisers reach more customers and increase downloads. Through the Microsoft Advertising Software Development Kit (SDK), Advertisers can retarget audiences on the Microsoft Network.

The simplified user interface and new design aims to allow advertisers to link apps with one click. It should make looking up app information easier because digital marketers can track and analyze app installations, in-app purchases, and monitor customer engagement.

Miracle Games, an earlier adopter of the features, wanted to reach more users that intended to download a desktop app or game, Miracle Games was able to reach users searching the Microsoft Store for related apps and games, increasing awareness, preference, and downloads.

After three months of testing and optimizing the ads, Miracle Games saw 25% more installs with Microsoft Store Ads, and averaged a conversion rate 6x higher, compared with prior use of Microsoft Advertising, according to the company.

Bing generates 14.5 billion global monthly searches, according to Comscore March 2023 data. This means Microsoft Store Ads will extend beyond the Microsoft Store on Windows. The feature enables Microsoft Store Ads to trigger on Bing search engine results pages, similar to regular product ads.

Enabling these ads requires advertisers to create a Microsoft Store Ad campaign in Microsoft Advertising and set the Ad Distribution Controls to “all.”