With Microsoft Advertising’s ad customizers, you can improve ad quality by dynamically creating custom ad copy.
You may already be familiar with ad customizers in Google Ads. The concept is similar to Microsoft Advertising campaigns. Let’s say your team has created an ad that you want to scale across multiple campaigns without having to manually build out different variations. Ad customizers allow you to dynamically insert pieces of data from a feed so that you can create hundreds or even thousands of different ad variations with just one ad copy.
How do ad customizers work?
Ad customizers act as parameters within the ad copy which gets replaced by dynamic text when the ad is shown to the user. The text values are pulled from a feed file and inserted into the line of text in a Microsoft ad.
The parameters in the ad copy follow this format: {=FeedName.AttributeName: Default}. If your feed name is “Deals” and you want to reference the custom attribute “Product (text)”, the parameter would be {=Deals.Product}
You can change ads based on various attributes in a feed, like location, audience lists, special promotions, time of day, seasonality and more. Microsoft Advertising also allows you to apply ad customizers to an ad group, keyword, or campaign.
In the example shown below, you can modify ad text based on user location by using the “target location” attribute in your feed.
Product (text) | Promo (text) | Start_price (price) | Target location |
Dyson Ball Animal 2 Vacuum | 10% off in all our stores | $90.00 | United States |
Dyson Ball Animal 2 Vacuum | 20% off in our San Diego locations | $80.00 | San Diego, CA |
The ad copy can be structured like this:
{=Deals.Product}
www.dyson.com
Get {=Deals.Promo} for limited time.
Buy now for only {=Deals.Start_price}
When someone is looking for “Dyson Ball Vacuum San Diego” or is physically based in San Diego looking for “Dyson Ball Vacuum” the ad will render like this:
Dyson Ball Animal 2 Vacuum
www.dyson.com
Get 20% off in our San Diego locations for limited time.
Buy now for only $80.00
You can also use the “date” attribute in your feed to offer promotional countdowns in an ad.
Product (text) | Promo (text) | Start_price (price) | Ends_by (date) |
Dyson Ball Animal 2 Vacuum | 30% off with free shipping | $70.00 | 2019/08/09 |
For an ad structured like this:
{=Deals.Product}
www.dyson.com
Get {=Deals.Promo} – offer ends in {=COUNTDOWN(Deals.Ends_by)}.
Buy now for only {=Deals.Start_price}
When someone is looking for “Dyson Ball Vacuum” on August 7, they will see a time-sensitive ad rendered like this:
Dyson Ball Animal 2 Vacuum
www.dyson.com
Get 30% off with free shipping – offer ends in 2 days.
Buy now for only $70.00
Extra details to keep in mind
- You can use ad customizers in all parts of an expanded text ad except for the URL field.
- If you are currently using ad customizers in Google Ads, you can use the Google Import tool to import ad customizer feeds and ads into your Microsoft Advertising account.
- You can create and manage feeds via the Feed Management Tool in the Microsoft Advertising UI, with the Google Import Tool, or via a bulk API integration.
- The company is currently working on a feature that will enable you to schedule feed uploads from a URL.
- Additional details about ad customizer feeds can be found on the Microsoft Advertising help page.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
