Microsoft Ads is revolutionizing ad placement control with the introduction of “brand lists” for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. This new feature empowers advertisers to enhance their brand image and ad visibility by excluding ads from appearing alongside specific brands, thereby improving ad relevance and return on ad spend (ROAS).
How It Works
Microsoft’s brand lists are designed to give advertisers more control over where their ads appear. Here’s a breakdown of how it works:
- Create Your Lists: Advertisers can create up to 20 unique brand lists.
- Add Brands: Brands can be selected from a predefined list or specific brands can be requested for addition.
- Exclude Unwanted Associations: These lists enable advertisers to prevent their ads from showing up in branded search queries associated with the excluded brands, thus maintaining a clean and relevant ad placement.
Why Advertisers Should Care
The PMax brand lists feature allows advertisers to avoid undesirable brand associations, maintain a clean brand image, and ensure their ads appear in a relevant context. This can significantly boost ad performance and improve ROAS.
Key Features
- Misspelling Coverage: Automatically includes common misspellings to ensure comprehensive brand exclusion.
- Editorial Review: Each brand request undergoes a thorough review to maintain quality and relevance.
- Timely Processing: Brand requests are reviewed and processed within 4-6 weeks, ensuring timely updates to your brand lists.
Accessing Brand Lists
To utilize the new brand lists feature, follow these steps:
- Create Your Brand Lists: Navigate to the brand lists section in your Microsoft Ads account and create up to 20 lists.
- Add Brands: Select brands from the predefined list or submit requests for specific brands to be added.
- Apply Brand Exclusions: Use these lists to exclude ads from appearing in searches related to the listed brands.
Gradual Rollout of Features
Microsoft is gradually rolling out this feature to ensure smooth integration and optimal performance. Initially, only a subset of advertisers will have access, with broader availability to follow. This phased approach allows Microsoft to refine the feature based on early feedback.
Additionally, Microsoft is on a continual journey to add more capabilities to PMax campaigns, providing advertisers with greater control over their ad placements. The most notable new capability is that brand exclusions for PMax are now available in pilot for all markets. Brand exclusion lists help you indicate which branded search queries you don’t want your ads to serve on, allowing greater control over brand image and ad visibility.
Brand exclusions on PMax are available in pilot for Microsoft Advertising online and will be coming to Microsoft Ads Editor in the coming months. To get enabled for brand exclusions, please reach out to your account manager or contact Support. See more details here: About brand lists.
Microsoft is also releasing campaign-level auto-generated asset settings, as well as the ability to block individual auto-generated text assets, to help advertisers better manage the type of assets being created in their PMax campaigns and the landing pages to which they send their users.
Later this month, Microsoft will also release search themes and search term insights reporting capabilities for Performance Max to help advertisers further enhance their PMax campaign effectiveness. Keep an eye out for those rolling out to all advertisers.
Microsoft will continue to share updates on new capabilities coming to Performance Max, such as video asset support. Note that support for Performance Max in SA360 is still in development, and timelines will be shared when more information is available. For more information, please reach out to your SA360 representative.
Final Thoughts
The introduction of brand lists for PMax campaigns is a significant step forward in digital advertising. Microsoft is providing advertisers with the tools to control their ad placements better, ensuring that ads appear in contexts that align with their brand values. This not only protects the brand image but also enhances ad relevance and effectiveness. At Mega Digital, we’re excited about the potential of this feature and encourage all advertisers to explore its benefits.
We’re thrilled to see advertisers achieve great success with PMax and to announce all the new capabilities coming to our platform. If you have feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out via your account manager or the channels below.
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