Microsoft’s Bing Ads announces In-Market Audiences, Custom Audiences, and integration with Adobe Audience Manager

Microsoft is continuing its push to attract advertisers to its Bing Ads platform. Following with a range of updates we’ve already seen this year for advertisers, Microsoft has now announced a few large new features that are sure to wet the appetites of companies and marketing agencies across the digital advertising spectrum, particularly where pay-per-click advertising is concerned.

To begin with, the 2 main announcements are:

• In-Market Audiences
• Custom Audiences

Advertisers on Google’s AdWords should already be familiar with these, as they’ve been available on Display ads for some time, and more recently arrived on Google’s search ads.

In-Market Audiences

Starting as a US-only test pilot, In-Market Audiences categorise users based on purchase intent. If Microsoft’s algorithms consider that a user is in the market to purchase something, they’ll be placed into a relevant category, which allows advertisers to target these groups of people to display products that are of interest to them in their current purchasing journey.

Data for these groups will come from Microsoft’s range of services, including Bing, MSN, and more.

Advertisers will be able to adjust their bids and manage targeting options for In-Market Audiences on search ads, similar to how Remarketing currently operates.

This solution acts as the entry point, as advertisers can make use of Microsoft’s data on users, rather than having to come up with their own data.

Custom Audiences

The next step up from In-Market Audiences is Custom Audiences. Unlike In-Market Audiences where advertisers make use of Microsoft’s data, with Custom Audiences advertisers need to leverage their own data to target groups of users. Through integration with a data platform manager (DPM), advertisers can easily bring their Custom Audience segments into Bing Ads for search remarketing.

The first DPM available for Bing Ads is Adobe Audience Manager, with more set to become available later on.

Custom Audiences are in pilot globally.

In order to take part in either of these pilots, advertisers will need to contact their Bing Ads account manager to have their accounts set-up accordingly.

To find out more about these updates, take a look at Microsoft’s announcement post.