Microsoft Advertising announces open beta for RSA ad customizers

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) will gain the ability to leverage ad customizers in this quarter’s open beta, Microsoft Advertising announced Tuesday,. That news should be well received by those advertisers that crave customization. Ad customizers have been available for Microsoft’s Expanded Text Ads and can now be deployed across the modern RSA ad unit.

RSA customizers can help to create more dynamic ads that feature more product information in the ad copy without requiring advertisers to manually change the copy. These enhancements allow marketers to create hundreds of ad variations across what is technically a single ad. These ads can be more targeted based on unique product details fed to the ad. This customization can, in turn, lead to higher conversion rates and lower cost per acquisition.

This will be in an open beta this quarter and will allow for the customization of RSAs using custom attributes. That matches similar functionality that Google Ads offers.

What’s included in the beta? The custom attributes announced for this open beta reflect much of what was previously available for Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) including:

• Text – Product names, descriptions and product categories
• Number – Inventory count and colors available
• Price – Sale discounts and product costs
• Percent – Interest rates or discount rates

Microsoft did not say if the previous “date” attribute will be maintained. It is also worth noting that previously Microsoft Advertising’s ETA ad customizers were available for any field except the final URL field.

The ad customizers for RSAs can be created in two ways. The first is using Microsoft advertising online and adding in the additional customizers via the web version. The second will be to upload a customizer feed that will dynamically leverage these attributes. Feed-based customizers are the most popular in terms of implementation due to the ease of updating via export from internal platforms.

What else did Microsoft announce? Included in Microsoft’s monthly updates are:

• Soon to be released open beta for campaign level conversion goals. Not much information was released on this beta, but we’d expect that it would follow Google’s lead on Campaign specific primary and secondary goals.
• RSA info in the Microsoft Advertising app. Advertisers will not be able to see RSA data from within both the Apple and Android versions of the Microsoft Advertising app.
• Rollout of Smart Campaigns in more countries. Good news for any advertisers out there that prefer the use of Smart Campaigns over traditional campaigns. These simplified campaign types geared towards small business are following out in Canada, France and Germany.
• Microsoft Audience Ads will be available across 39 additional countries. The native ads solution will be rolling out to India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. In Europe this includes: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Holy See (the), Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, and Turkey.
  

Why we care: Advertisers that have utilized ad customizers for their ETAs can join the beta and bring that customization to RSAs. It’s clear that RSAs are here to stay, but some of the functionality to make these ads truly dynamic has been lacking. These new changes look to mimic the previous functionality from Google Ads, which should make implementation a breeze. In a world where automation is taking over, these detailed customizers give advertisers yet another welcomed input into the system.

About The Author

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.