Just in: Microsoft Ads added new bid strategies to its Microsoft Audience Network ads.

While Microsoft has supported automated bidding strategies for its core campaign types, they’ve added two new types for all Microsoft Audience Network ads.

What New Bid Strategies Are Available?

As of today, advertisers can now use the following bid strategies for any campaign opted into the Audience Network:

• Maximize Conversions. Aims to get you the most conversions possible within your budget, with the option of Maximum CPC (Cost per Click) and CPA (Cost per Acquisition) limits.
• Target Cost per Acquisition (CPA). Aims to get you the most conversions possible at your target Cost per Acquisition (CPA).

Microsoft notes that campaigns with less than 30 conversions in a month may report volatility as the system starts to learn behaviors.

Additionally, the bid strategies are not compatible with 3rd-party platform bidding, which is something to keep in mind for advertisers.

These automated bid strategies are already leveraged within Search and Performance Max (in beta) campaigns.

Increasing support for more automated bid strategies in the Microsoft Audience Network campaigns speaks to Microsoft’s continued investment in conversion modeling and accuracy.

Utilizing conversion-based bid strategies to upper funnel campaigns like the Audience Network can help provide incremental lift in what have primarily been known as awareness-driving campaigns.

New UET Testing Functionality

In addition to the added bid strategies, Microsoft Ads announced its new UET testing functionality.

This is a new functionality to help test and troubleshoot the Microsoft UET tag setup and configuration.

When testing UET events setup, advertisers may see items such as:

• Tag not found
• No traffic received
• Time out
• Receiving traffic

Real-time tag testing can help identify potential issues right away, which is crucial, especially coming into a holiday purchasing season.

Start Testing Before The Holidays

Microsoft’s new bid strategies and UET tag testing are welcome additions coming into Q4.

If you’re using Microsoft Audience Network ads, try testing out a new conversion-based bid strategy to identify any areas of opportunity.

What are you most excited to try from Microsoft Ads this quarter?