At Adzooma, our approach to AI is simple: it’s here to support you, not replace you. These tools are built to enhance your workflow, not automate it away. Every recommendation keeps you in the driver’s seat – with full control and visibility over what goes live in your accounts.

Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Opportunity #1: Utilise All Text Assets in Your Performance Max Campaigns

If your Performance Max asset groups aren’t making the most of all available text slots, you’re leaving performance potential on the table. This new Opportunity identifies exactly what’s missing – and helps you fill in the gaps with AI-generated suggestions.

What does it do?
Adzooma scans your asset group and flags any underused formats across:

• 15 Headlines
• 5 Long Headlines
• 5 Descriptions

Once triggered, you’ll see a guided AI tool to help you generate tailored content – fast.

How it works:

1. Generate AI Suggestions: You’ll be prompted to input a few key details:
   
   • Your landing page (pre-filled)
   • Tone of voice (e.g. friendly, persuasive, inspiring)
   • Key focus (e.g. a seasonal offer or product name)
     
2. Based on this, Adzooma’s AI suggests a complete set of new headlines and descriptions.
   
3. Review & Apply: Choose the content that fits your brand best, edit as needed, and apply. Anything left blank gets tidied up automatically, giving you a clean, complete, optimised asset group.
   

Remember: You stay in control – every AI suggestion is editable, so you can tailor each asset before publishing.

Opportunity #2: Improve Your Responsive Search Ads

Your Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) perform best when they’re rich, varied, and logically structured. This Opportunity identifies ads that are under-optimised and offers an easy way to enhance them using AI-powered content suggestions.

What does it recommend?

• At least 8 unique headlines
• At least 2 varied descriptions
• Logical, diverse combinations across your ad content
  

How it works:

1. Generate AI Suggestions: Launch the guided tool, add your landing page, select your tone of voice, and specify your ad’s key message.
   
2. Review & Apply: Browse the generated options, choose what works for your brand, make any tweaks, and apply your updates directly within Adzooma.
   

By optimising these elements, you’ll see a direct impact on Ad Strength – and ultimately, on performance.

Why We’re Using AI – and How We Think About It

These new Opportunities are just the beginning of our ongoing journey with AI. Used thoughtfully, AI can be a powerful co-pilot for marketers – helping to spark ideas, speed up workflows, and surface new insights. It’s most powerful when paired with your creativity and expertise.

At Adzooma, we follow a few guiding principles to make sure AI stays a tool that works for you, not instead of you:

• You’re in control. AI offers inspiration and assistance – but you always have the final say over what goes live.
  
• Quality needs your expertise. AI suggestions are designed to speed up your work, but your knowledge ensures they fit your brand perfectly.
  
• Your data stays protected. We handle your advertising data carefully and thoughtfully, with strict limits on what’s sent to third-party models.
  
• We’re always improving. AI is evolving fast – and so are we. We’ll continue refining suggestions, monitoring results, and exploring new tools to keep delivering the best experience for you.

Ready to Try the New Opportunities?

Head over to your Opportunities tab in Adzooma to see if any of your campaigns qualify for the new Performance Max or RSA suggestions.

We’d love to hear what you think and as always, your feedback helps shape what comes next. You can let us know what you think via the feedback board.

If you’ve not heard much about programmatic before, you’re not alone. Despite its growing dominance in the digital ad space, many marketers and business owners still view it as something complex or reserved for big brands. In reality, it’s increasingly accessible — and it offers some major advantages over traditional PPC, particularly when it comes to cost-efficiency and precise targeting.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is Programmatic Advertising?

At its core, programmatic advertising refers to the automated buying and selling of digital ad space in real-time. Unlike PPC, where marketers manually select keywords, set bids, and adjust campaigns by hand, programmatic uses artificial intelligence and real-time bidding (RTB) technology to serve ads to the most relevant users at the most relevant time — across a vast range of platforms and devices.

Think of it as hiring a highly skilled, always-on media buyer who’s constantly adjusting your ads to maximise effectiveness — without you having to lift a finger.

And it’s not limited to just search engines. Programmatic spans web, mobile apps, connected TVs, podcasts, digital billboards, and more. In fact, over 90% of all UK digital display ads are now traded programmatically, according to IAB UK.

1. Precision Targeting That Goes Beyond Keywords

One of the key limitations of PPC is its reliance on keywords and broad demographic categories. While this works to a degree, it lacks nuance. Programmatic, by contrast, leverages rich user data to create much more detailed audience segments.

Rather than targeting “people searching for running shoes”, programmatic allows you to target people who recently browsed fitness blogs, visited sportswear sites, and are frequent users of fitness tracking apps — across all their devices. You can also layer in location, time of day, interests, and even behaviours like recent purchases.

The result? Your ads are served to people who are far more likely to be interested, rather than anyone who happens to type a certain phrase into Google.

2. Reduced Wasted Spend = Lower Cost Per Acquisition

When your targeting is sharper, your spend becomes more efficient. That’s where programmatic really shines.

In traditional PPC, it’s easy to waste budget on irrelevant clicks — especially in competitive industries where keyword costs are high. But because programmatic buyers are constantly evaluating who sees your ad (and whether they’re likely to engage), they can filter out poor-quality impressions before a penny is spent.

A report by Adobe suggests that programmatic can lower customer acquisition costs by as much as 30% compared to traditional methods, thanks to better targeting and real-time optimisation.

That means you’re not just spending less — you’re also getting more for what you do spend.

3. Real-Time Optimisation Without Manual Intervention

With PPC, campaign success often hinges on how frequently someone monitors performance and makes manual adjustments. Programmatic, however, operates dynamically.

It continuously assesses which audiences are responding, where they’re seeing your ads, what time of day yields the best results, and even which creative elements (like images or headlines) are working best. Based on this data, it reallocates budget automatically to where it’s most effective.

This real-time feedback loop improves performance over time — and reduces the need for constant hands-on management.

For businesses with lean marketing teams, this is a major advantage.

4. Access to a Broader Range of Platforms

While PPC is typically confined to search engines or social media platforms, programmatic opens the door to a far wider network. You can run ads across millions of websites, news outlets, apps, streaming services, and more — all through a single platform.

That’s important because your audience isn’t only on Google or Facebook. They’re checking the weather on their phone, watching catch-up TV on their tablet, reading the news on their laptop, and listening to podcasts during their commute.

Programmatic ensures your brand shows up in all those places, in a unified, data-driven way.

5. Unlocking Search Intent Across Channels

Your audience is always searching. Every keyword they type into a search engine reveals their intent — their wants, needs, and plans. Traditionally, PPC campaigns have been the primary way to capture this intent. But if you’re relying solely on search ads, you’re missing valuable opportunities.

Search intent isn’t just a PPC tool; it’s a gateway to connecting with your audience across multiple channels. Programmatic advertising allows you to retarget users based on keyword behaviours and extend your messaging to display, video, and connected TV.

For example, someone searching for “best CRM software” might not click your ad but could later be retargeted with a compelling demo video on YouTube or a testimonial banner on a relevant tech news site.

This approach means you’re staying visible across the entire customer journey — not just during the initial search.

Final Thoughts

Programmatic advertising isn’t just for big corporations with big budgets. It’s becoming the new standard in digital media buying — and for good reason.

For marketers looking to improve efficiency, reach the right audiences with more accuracy, and spend less time managing campaigns, programmatic offers a compelling alternative to PPC. It may require a slight learning curve at first, but the long-term gains in cost-efficiency and targeting precision make it well worth exploring.

Search intent is a powerful signal, but its value goes far beyond PPC. By combining real-time bidding, behavioural targeting, and search-based audience signals, programmatic helps you engage users more strategically — across multiple channels.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits of programmatic is the quality of data it provides. While PPC reports might show you clicks, impressions, and conversions, programmatic can offer far more granular insights, including; Which devices your audience is using, what content they engage with, how they move across platforms and hat led to a conversion (not just last-click attribution).

These insights allow you to build a clearer picture of your customer journey — and make more informed decisions about where to invest next.

With ClickAds, our fully managed programmatic platform, you can unlock the power of keyword search retargeting, gain access to premium inventory, and activate a smarter media strategy. If you’re ready to make intent-based advertising work harder for you, ClickAds is your next step forward.

In this guide, we explore the key strategies and best practices to optimise your Performance Max campaigns for maximum success.

1. Asset Group Structure: Laying the Foundations for Success

In PMax campaigns, traditional ad groups are replaced by asset groups, which provide greater flexibility and a more holistic approach to ad targeting. Asset groups should be structured around themes, aligning with specific products, services, or promotional strategies.

Best Practices for Asset Grouping:

• Group by Product or Service: For instance, clothing products in one asset group, footwear in another.
• Segment by Price or Brand: Separate asset groups for premium and budget products, or different brand lines.
• Seasonal & Promotional Grouping: Create asset groups tailored for key events such as Black Friday or Mother’s Day.

2. Shopping – Product Listing Group Structure

For shopping ads within a PMax campaign, using product listing groups ensures better control and relevance. 

Key Strategies:

• Segregate by Product Type or Audience: Keep premium and budget-friendly products in separate groups, or segment based on seasonality.
• Cross-list Products When Relevant: If a product appeals to multiple audiences, include it in multiple listing groups.

Listing Groups can be filtered using Hierarchy View:

3. Audience Signals: Guiding the Algorithm for Smarter Targeting

The success of a PMax campaign hinges on the quality of data provided—particularly audience signals. These help the algorithm understand who is most likely to convert, allowing it to find similar high-value users across Microsoft’s vast network.

The more relevant and accurate your audience signals, the quicker the algorithm can optimise, improving both short-term results and long-term campaign performance.

Key Audience Signals to Include:

1. Remarketing Audiences (Highly Valuable)
   • Past website visitors
   • Previous converters
     These are your warmest leads and often yield the highest conversion rates.
2. Interest-Based Audiences (In-Market & Affinity Segments)
   • Users actively researching or comparing products/services in your niche
   • Audiences aligned with specific interests related to your offerings
     Perfect for reaching users with strong intent but who haven’t yet engaged with your brand.
3. Customer Match Lists
   • Upload email lists of previous customers
   • Target existing clients for upselling, cross-selling, or retention
     This creates high-converting opportunities with users already familiar with your brand.
4. Custom Audiences
   • Build audiences based on specific keywords, URLs, or app usage
   • Target users whose search behaviours align with your ideal customer profile
     A flexible way to tailor audiences to niche interests and high-intent behaviours.
5. LinkedIn Targeting Options(Exclusive to Microsoft Ads)
   • Target by job titles, industries, or company sizes
     Ideal for B2B campaigns aiming for precise professional targeting.
6. Demographic Data
   • Age, gender, household income, parental status, etc.
     Use this data to fine-tune asset groups and ensure relevance to different audience segments.

Remember: Audience signals do not limit reach; they help the algorithm optimise faster and target the most promising prospects.

4. Search Themes: Enhancing Buyer Intent Recognition

Search themes are a newer type of signal you can give the campaign to help determine who sees your ads and the types of searches they use, all intended to help drive lower-funnel conversion actions to maximise leads or sales.

They operate at the asset group level and can be added during creation or editing. You can include up to 25 search themes per asset group, with a maximum of 80 characters each.

Best Practices:

• Add up to 25 search themes per asset group (max 80 characters each).
• Prioritise high-intent keywords that reflect buyer behaviour.
• Use historical data to focus on proven, high-performing terms.
• Be specific over broad: Long-tail keywords often yield stronger results.

5. Assets: Crafting High-Performing Creatives

Quality assets are the backbone of any Performance Max campaign. The PMax algorithm thrives on variation, continuously testing different combinations of creatives to identify which messages, visuals, and formats drive the strongest results. By providing a wide range of high-quality, versatile assets, you give the algorithm more opportunities to find the most effective combinations, leading to higher engagement, improved conversion rates, and a stronger return on ad spend. 

Well-optimised assets not only enhance ad relevance but also allow your campaign to adapt seamlessly across Microsoft’s network, ensuring consistency and maximising performance. 

Essential Asset Types:

• Logos: Up to five brand logos for consistency.
• Headlines: Up to 15 short headlines (30 characters) and five long headlines (90 characters).
• Descriptions: Up to five ad descriptions (90 characters) to highlight key selling points.
• Call to Action (CTA): Encourage engagement with compelling CTAs like “Shop Now” or “Get a Free Quote”.
• Ad Extensions: Additional information like phone numbers or location details.

Image Best Practices:

• Use headlines for messaging rather than embedding text in images.
• Keep visuals clean and simple for maximum clarity across placements.
• Ensure images are high resolution and optimised for mobile and desktop.

Pro Tips for Asset Optimisation:

• Preview all ads before submitting to catch issues like cropping or text misalignment.
• Choose images that directly reflect the product or service being promoted.
• Prioritise clarity and simplicity—busy images or excessive text can reduce ad performance.

6. Budgets: Allocating Resources for Maximum Performance

It’s important to give your performance max campaign enough budget to achieve the best possible results. It is generally recommended that your Pmax campaign has 2-3x the budget of your historical standalone campaigns.

This is due to the fact Pmax will serve across multiple ad formats, on many platforms, throughout the full funnel to engage and convert your customers. In order to give the campaign the best chance of success, you don’t want to limit its capabilities, as too little resource will hinder the algorithm’s optimisations and therefore your performance.

However, the budget you allocate will of course vary depending on your business aims, strategy and the overall resource available to you.

Considerations:

• Campaign Goals & Bid Strategies: Allocate a budget that supports your target ROAS or CPA.
• Competitive Landscape: In highly competitive industries, higher budgets may be needed.
• Seasonality & Trends: Adjust spending during peak sales periods.
• Testing & Learning Speed: A higher budget helps the algorithm learn and optimise faster.

7. Bid Strategies: Choosing the Right Approach

In order to maximise your results it’s important to choose the right bid strategy to help you achieve your goals.

To use automated bidding strategies as described below, you need conversion tracking set up (either a UET tag + an active conversion goal, or offline conversions). If you don’t have conversion tracking in your PMax campaign, the campaign will optimize to maximize clicks.

• Maximise Conversions: Will help you get the most conversions for your budget. Whichever conversion goals you have set up the campaigns to target, the bid strategy will get as many as it possibly can. This is a good strategy to start with if you are targeting lead generation and phone calls for the business.
• Target CPA: This strategy is beneficial when you have conversions being generated in the campaign and you want to add a layer of control. This helps to set a target cost per acquisition or target cost per conversion to aim for, which can improve the efficiency of the results.
• Maximise Conversion Value: If you are an e-commerce business and looking to get the highest amount of revenue or conversion value possible within your budget, then this bid strategy will help you achieve that goal. It’s important to note this won’t however factor in efficiency or the ROAS.
• Target ROAS: If therefore you want more control and to aim for a certain return from your ad spend, Target ROAS is the perfect option for you. For example, if you want £9 revenue from every £1 spent on ads, you can set your Target ROAS to 900% and the bid strategy will aim to achieve that return with your budget. This can sometimes hinder the amount you spend, as you are trying to achieve a certain efficiency, rather than just volume. Therefore, it’s vital to assess what the biggest priority is for your campaign, whether that’s the volumes of sales/revenue or the efficiency of those returns

8. Brand Safety and Exclusions: Maintaining Control Over Where Your Ads Appear

In a fully automated campaign like Performance Max, maintaining control over where your ads appear is crucial for protecting your brand’s reputation. Without proper safeguards, ads could unintentionally show alongside sensitive or irrelevant content, potentially harming your brand image or leading to wasted ad spend.

Microsoft Advertising offers robust brand safety tools that help you control ad placements and avoid undesirable associations. By using these features, you can ensure your ads appear in safe, brand-appropriate environments, while still benefiting from the expansive reach of Performance Max.

Core Brand Safety Features:

1. Account-Level Negative Keywords:

• Block unwanted search terms that don’t align with your brand or campaign goals.
• Prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant, sensitive, or low-quality searches.
• Example: A luxury retailer might block terms like “cheap” or “bargain, while a financial brand may exclude “get rich quick”.

2. Website Exclusions:

• Prevent ads from appearing on specific websites that could negatively impact your brand or reach the wrong audience.
• Ideal for blocking competitor sites, controversial platforms, or low-quality traffic sources.
• Continuously review placement reports to spot and exclude underperforming or misaligned sites.

3. Brand Safety Categories:

• Use Microsoft’s predefined categories to automatically block ads from appearing alongside sensitive or potentially harmful content.
• This allows you to maintain brand integrity without manually managing individual placements.
• Categories you can exclude include:
  • Crime
  • Infectious Diseases & Outbreaks
  • Kids Content
  • Natural Disasters
  • Politics
  • Protests & Demonstrations
  • Sensitive Social Issues
  • Unscored Traffic (traffic that hasn’t been categorised or evaluated for brand safety)

9. Copilot: AI-Powered Campaign Optimisation

Copilot combines the power of generative AI and natural language processing to streamline your Performance Max campaigns, simplifying asset creation, personalisation, and optimisation. It acts as your AI-powered assistant, helping you build high-performing ads faster while maintaining creative control.

With Copilot, you can:

• Manage campaigns using a conversational AI interface.
• Generate and customise ad assets—including images, headlines, and descriptions.
• Review campaign performance with data-driven recommendations, saving time and boosting efficiency.

Copilot & Performance Max 

Copilot works hand-in-hand with Performance Max, making it easier to create high-quality asset groups by analysing your website content and suggesting tailored visuals and copy.

10. Reporting on Performance Max Campaigns

Effective reporting is essential for understanding the impact of your Performance Max campaigns and identifying key areas for optimisation. Microsoft Advertising offers comprehensive reporting tools that provide deep insights into campaign performance, audience behaviour, and asset effectiveness—allowing you to make data-driven decisions that maximise ROI.

Performance Max reporting covers a wide range of metrics and dimensions, helping you evaluate everything from overall campaign success to the performance of individual assets and audience segments.

Key Reporting Areas:

1. Campaign Performance Overview:

• Gain high-level insights into core metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, cost-per-click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS).
• Use the campaign view to monitor daily trends and identify spikes or drops in performance.
• Assess how well your campaign aligns with your KPIs and make real-time adjustments as needed.

2. Asset Group and Product Performance:

• Break down performance by asset groups to see which themes, products, or services are driving the most engagement.
• View individual asset metrics—such as impressions, click-through rates (CTR), and conversions—to identify top-performing headlines, descriptions, and images.
• For shopping ads, analyse performance by listing groups to determine which product categories or individual SKUs are delivering the highest ROI.

3. Asset-Level Performance Analysis:

• Understand which text and image combinations perform best across different placements.
• Identify strong-performing ad extensions and optimise underperforming ones.
• Use these insights to refine your asset library and create more effective creatives.

4. Audience and Demographic Insights:

• View and export metrics broken down by audience name or audience category (in-market audiences, remarketing lists, e.g.)
• This reporting shows audiences that were associated with the campaign via audience signals. If users are from outside the defined targets, it will be shown under Users not in audience segments. 
• Review how different audience segments engage with your ads, including demographics like age, gender, and household income.
• Evaluate the impact of audience signals and fine-tune targeting based on conversion data.
• Identify underperforming audience segments and adjust bidding strategies accordingly. 

5. Location and Device Performance:

• Analyse campaign results by geographic location to identify high-performing regions or cities.
• Review performance by device type (desktop, mobile, tablet) to optimise bidding strategies and improve user experience across platforms.

6. Search Term and Placement Reports:

• Search Term Reports: Understand which user queries triggered your ads and contributed to conversions. Use this data to refine audience signals and negative keyword lists.
• Website Reports: See a list of websites and placements where your ads appeared. This is measured by impressions only, not conversions. Use this insight to block irrelevant or underperforming placements.

Final Thoughts

Performance Max campaigns offer a powerful way to leverage AI-driven automation while maintaining control over key elements such as audience signals, search themes, and asset optimisation.

By structuring campaigns strategically, providing high-quality creative assets, and leveraging advanced reporting tools, advertisers can unlock the full potential of PMax—maximising reach, conversions, and ROI.

With tools like Microsoft’s Copilot, campaign setup and optimisation have never been easier, allowing businesses to refine their approach and achieve exceptional results in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of setting up a Performance Max campaign in Microsoft Advertising, ensuring you make the most of this powerful ad format.

What is a Performance Max Campaign?

Performance Max is an all-in-one campaign type that allows advertisers to display ads across multiple Microsoft platforms and channels. It uses AI to optimise performance and reduce manual work, enabling you to:

• Reach high-performing audiences effortlessly
• Utilise cross-channel, multi-format ads
• Maximise results with automated bid strategies

Performance Max campaigns give you access to Microsoft’s vast inventory, including Edge, Bing, Yahoo, Outlook, MSN, and audience partner sites, utilising formats such as search ads, shopping ads, and visual ads.

How to Create a Performance Max Campaign

Step 1: Navigate to Performance Max in Microsoft Advertising

To begin, log into the Microsoft Advertising platform, then:

1. Click on “Campaigns” in the navigation menu.
2. Press the blue “Create” button.
3. Choose Performance Max from the campaign options.
4. Either create a new campaign from scratch or import from Google Ads.

Step 2: Define Your Campaign Goal

Selecting the right goal ensures your campaign is optimised for the desired outcome:

• Drive conversions – Ideal for lead generation, sign-ups, or other direct actions.
• Sell products – Designed for e-commerce businesses running shopping ads.

Once you’ve set your goal, continue with the Performance Max setup.

Step 3: Connect a Merchant Centre Account (For Shopping Ads)

If you’re selling products and want to run shopping ads within your campaign, you’ll need to connect a Microsoft Merchant Centre account.

• If you don’t have a product catalogue (e.g., for B2B lead generation), you can skip this step.

Step 4: Add Your Ad Assets

Your ad performance heavily depends on the assets you provide. To ensure strong results, add multiple variations of:

• Images – High-quality visuals to attract engagement.
• Ad copy – Headlines and descriptions with clear USPs and strong CTAs.
• Extensions – Additional information such as price, promotion, or sitelinks to enhance visibility.

Microsoft’s AI will test different ad combinations across various placements, selecting the highest-performing ones.

Step 5: Set Audience Targeting & Locations

Performance Max relies on audience signals and conversion data to identify high-value customers. To enhance performance, provide relevant audience signals such as:

• Interest-based audiences (in-market)
• Remarketing audiences (past website visitors, previous converters)
• Customer match lists (emails of existing customers)
• Custom audiences (user interests and search behaviours)
• LinkedIn targeting (job titles, industries, company data)
• Demographics (age, gender, location)

Search Themes

Search themes help refine who sees your ads by aligning with relevant search queries. You can add up to 25 search themes per asset group to improve targeting.

Both audience signals and search themes play a crucial role in reducing the learning period and accelerating campaign optimisation.

Step 6: Configure Other Campaign Settings

Once you’ve defined your audience, set the following campaign details:

• Ad scheduling – Choose days and times for your ads to run.
• Conversion actions – Either:
  • Use “Include in conversions” for all relevant conversion events.
  • Specify conversion types (e.g., contact forms, phone calls, product sales).
• Enable auto-generated text and image assets (recommended for better ad variations).
• Allow URL expansion, but exclude specific pages if necessary (e.g., blog pages).

Keeping these enhancements on is recommended to maximise performance.

Step 7: Select Bid Strategies & Budgets

Performance Max campaigns optimise towards conversions, so it’s essential to have conversion tracking set up via a UET tag and defined conversion goals.

• Available Bidding Strategies:
  • Maximise Conversions or Target CPA
  • Maximise Conversion Value or Target ROAS
• Budget Recommendations: To ensure optimal performance across multiple ad placements, allocate 2-3x the budget of a typical standalone campaign.

Step 8: Add Negative Keywords & Website Exclusions

Since Performance Max campaigns are highly automated, they can sometimes appear on irrelevant searches or websites. To maintain control, use:

• Account-level negative keywords to exclude irrelevant search queries.
• Website exclusion lists to prevent ads from appearing on unwanted placements.

Step 9: Import from Google Ads (Optional)

If you already run a Performance Max campaign in Google Ads, you can import it into Microsoft Advertising to save time.

How to Import:

1. Select Google Import during campaign creation.
2. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
3. Choose the campaigns you want to import.
4. Adjust import settings and start the process.

Important: Ensure Microsoft conversion tracking is properly configured before importing.

Final Thoughts

Performance Max campaigns are a powerful way to automate and scale your advertising across Microsoft’s network. By setting clear goals, using high-quality assets, refining audience signals, and applying strategic bid strategies, you can maximise efficiency and drive better results.

Once your campaigns are live, take them to the next level with Adzooma’s Performance Max Opportunities. Adzooma provides an intelligent campaign audit, delivering personalised recommendations to eliminate errors, cut unnecessary costs, and enhance overall performance.

Why Use Adzooma?

• Address Common Gaps – Identify and fix missing assets, budget shortfalls, or weak targeting.
• Save Time – Automate optimisation suggestions, reducing manual workload.
• Boost Performance – Unlock the full potential of Performance Max campaigns with precise, AI-powered insights.
• Increase ROI – Deliver more effective, cost-efficient ads tailored to your target audience.

Get Started Today

To maximise the success of your Performance Max campaigns with Adzooma, follow these steps to start optimising:

1. Sign up for Adzooma or login to your account.
2. Connect your ad accounts to receive tailored insights.
3. Explore your Opportunities and implement key Performance Max improvements.

Start smarter, faster optimisations today and unlock the full potential of your campaigns!

Adzooma’s new PMAX Opportunities are here to simplify your campaign management and maximise your results. With seven actionable recommendations, these features ensure that your campaigns are fully optimised, saving you time while driving better outcomes.

1. Utilise All Text Assets in Your Performance Max Campaigns

Adzooma detects campaigns missing essential text assets, such as headlines, long headlines, or descriptions, and lets you quickly add them.

The Impact: Fully utilising text assets allows Google and Microsoft to generate the most effective ad combinations for your target audiences. Missing text assets reduce ad flexibility, limit relevance, and can lead to underperformance. Ensuring all text assets are complete increases the likelihood of capturing attention and driving conversions.

2. Increase Performance Max Campaign Budget

This feature identifies campaigns with insufficient daily budgets and provides tailored recommendations for adjustments based on performance data.

The Impact: Campaigns with inadequate budgets may fail to collect enough data for smart bidding algorithms to perform effectively. This can lead to missed opportunities, inefficient bidding, and lower campaign performance. Allocating sufficient budget ensures your campaigns can optimise efficiently and deliver stronger results.

3. Add Logo Assets to Your Performance Max Campaigns

Adzooma highlights campaigns missing logo assets and provides guidance on how to add them.

The Impact: Logos enhance brand recognition and build trust with your audience. Ads featuring logos are more memorable and credible, helping to improve brand awareness and engagement. Neglecting this asset can make your campaigns less impactful, especially in competitive ad spaces.

4. Apply Brand Exclusions to Performance Max Campaigns

Adzooma identifies campaigns missing brand exclusions and suggests adding them to improve targeting and brand safety.

The Impact: Ads that appear alongside unrelated or competing brands can confuse your audience and harm your brand’s reputation. Applying brand exclusions ensures your ads are displayed in appropriate contexts, improving relevance and protecting your brand image while preventing wasted spend.

5. Add Image Assets to Your Performance Max Campaigns

Adzooma flags missing image assets and ensures you meet the necessary size and ratio requirements for optimal performance.

The Impact: High-quality images are essential for creating visually compelling ads that stand out across Google’s vast inventory. Without the required image assets, your campaigns may lose visibility or appear less professional, reducing their overall effectiveness. Completing image assets ensures your campaigns are visually consistent and engaging, driving better results.

6. Add a Video to Your Performance Max Campaigns

Adzooma detects campaigns missing video assets and provides guidance on how to add them, ensuring full coverage across placements.

The Impact: Video is one of the most engaging ad formats, offering a unique ability to capture attention and drive conversions. Without video assets, your campaigns may miss critical opportunities to stand out in competitive spaces. Incorporating video ensures your ads leverage this high-impact format to boost engagement and conversion rates.

7. Add Audience Signals to Your Performance Max Campaigns

Adzooma flags campaigns without audience signals and offers recommendations for adding them to enhance targeting.

The Impact: Audience signals enable algorithms to identify and target the most relevant users faster, reducing the learning period and improving campaign performance. Without audience signals, your campaigns may take longer to optimise, potentially wasting budget during this phase. Adding audience signals ensures your campaigns are focused and efficient, maximising ROI.

Why These Opportunities Matter

Adzooma’s new PMAX Opportunities provide a smarter, faster way to manage and optimise your campaigns. These updates ensure you:

• Address Common Gaps: Identify and resolve issues such as missing assets, insufficient budgets, or ineffective targeting.
• Save Time: Automate the process of finding optimisation opportunities, reducing manual effort.
• Boost Performance: Fully optimise your campaigns to achieve better results with less guesswork.
• Increase ROI: Deliver more relevant, impactful ads to your audience while improving cost efficiency.

Get Started Today
Maximise the potential of your Performance Max campaigns with Adzooma’s new Opportunities. These tools make it simple to optimise your campaigns and achieve meaningful results.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Sign up for Adzooma or login to your account.
2. Connect your ad accounts to access personalised recommendations.
3. Explore your Opportunities and implement key PMAX improvements.

Start making smarter, faster optimisations today and see how these insights can help you achieve better outcomes for your campaigns.

Microsoft Advertising offers powerful tools to help you craft campaigns that drive results and make the most of this season. Here’s how to turn Valentine’s Day into a moment of roses and ROI for your business.

Understanding Valentine’s Day Search Patterns

The February Focus

While searches begin to rise in January, the real action happens in February. Shoppers often procrastinate, with 40% of Valentine’s Day conversions starting from clicks in the final weeks. This means your campaigns need to be ready to cater to last-minute buyers who are looking for quick and convenient options. Highlighting same-day delivery, digital gift cards, or local pick-up can be key to capturing this audience.

Decision-Making Trends

Consumer search behaviour shifts as Valentine’s Day approaches:

• Inspiration Searches: Early on, shoppers seek ideas with non-branded queries like “unique gifts for him” or “Valentine’s Day date ideas.” This is your chance to provide curated gift collections and themed landing pages to guide their decisions.
• Specific Searches: Closer to the day, branded searches surge as shoppers finalise their plans. Ensure your brand and offers are easy to find and stand out among competitors.

2025 Valentine’s Day Trends to Watch

1. Affordability Matters Shoppers are on the lookout for deals and discounts, with searches for “promo codes” and “budget-friendly gifts” trending. Make affordability a focal point in your messaging—whether through “gifts under £50” collections or exclusive offers.
2. The Rise of Local Searches Convenience is king. With an increase in phrases like “near me” and “local delivery,” highlighting proximity and fast service can give you an edge. Use location extensions and local inventory ads to tap into this trend.
3. Personalisation Takes the Lead Shoppers are increasingly drawn to unique and thoughtful gifts. Keywords like “personalised gifts” and “sentimental Valentine’s Day ideas” are seeing a rise. Showcase customisable options in your ads to resonate with this audience.
4. Words That Work Terms like “best,” “top-rated,” and “perfect” grab attention. Incorporate these into your ad copy to boost click-through rates and conversions.

Strategies to Maximise Sales This Valentine’s Day

1. Capture Attention with Shopping Campaigns

Shopping Campaigns are perfect for showcasing your products to potential buyers. Use high-quality visuals, transparent pricing, and persuasive product descriptions to grab attention. For instance, if you’re selling jewellery, include close-up images that highlight the intricate details and pair them with descriptions that convey the quality and craftsmanship. Leveraging optional attributes, such as ‘customisable’ or ‘Valentine’s edition,’ can further enhance visibility and relevance.

2. Stand Out with Multimedia Ads

Multimedia Ads combine rich visuals with compelling text to deliver eye-catching advertisements. These ads work exceptionally well for promoting Valentine’s gift sets, premium collections, or time-sensitive offers. Use high-resolution images and clear, emotive messaging to inspire clicks. For example, an ad featuring a luxury watch with the tagline, “Timeless Love,” could resonate with gift buyers looking for something memorable.

3. Extend Reach with Dynamic Search Ads

Dynamic Search Ads automatically match user queries to your website content, making them ideal for covering gaps in your keyword strategy. These ads are particularly useful for capturing traffic from long-tail searches that aren’t included in your campaigns. They dynamically generate headlines and landing pages based on your site, ensuring your ad remains relevant and aligned with users’ needs.

4. Use Sitelink and Image Extensions to Guide Buyers

Sitelink Extensions let you guide shoppers to specific pages, like gift guides, promotional offers, or fast delivery options, making it easier for them to find what they need. For example, a sitelink titled “Shop Gifts Under £50” could appeal to budget-conscious buyers. Pair this with Image Extensions to show visually appealing product images that complement your ad copy, enticing users to click and explore further.

5. Emphasise Local Inventory

Local Inventory Ads are perfect for retailers with physical stores, allowing you to display real-time availability for products. Highlight items that are in stock and available for immediate pick-up to attract last-minute shoppers. For instance, show nearby customers that your Valentine’s Day flower arrangements are ready to collect, adding urgency and convenience to their purchase decisions.

6. Tap into Audience Ads

Microsoft Advertising’s Audience Ads help you connect with specific segments, such as “Valentine’s Day Shoppers” or “Luxury Gift Buyers.” These highly targeted ads leverage Microsoft’s audience insights to focus on users most likely to convert. Combine them with automated bidding to maximise ROI and personalise ad creative to resonate with your chosen audience.

7. Refresh Your Copy and Creative

Keep your campaigns fresh and relevant by weaving in Valentine’s Day themes. Use emotive phrases like “Say it with a gift” or “Celebrate love this Valentine’s” to capture attention. Promote perks like free delivery or special bundles to make your offer more enticing. Don’t forget to add Call Extensions to showcase exclusive discounts or limited-time deals, making it easier for users to take action.

8. Automate for Smarter Campaigns

Take advantage of Microsoft Advertising’s automation tools to streamline campaign management. Use automated bidding to optimise for conversions and track campaign performance in real time to make data-driven adjustments. Features like Responsive Search Ads can dynamically adjust your ad copy to match what shoppers are searching for, saving time while improving relevance during this busy shopping period.

Turning Love into Long-Term Success

Valentine’s Day isn’t just about a spike in sales—it’s an opportunity to strengthen customer relationships and build loyalty. By crafting campaigns that resonate with shoppers’ needs and leveraging the tools at your disposal, you can create memorable experiences that go beyond one day. With Microsoft Advertising, this season of love can also be a season of lasting results.

Here’s what’s new and how it can help you refine your advertising strategy.

1. Expanded Campaign Analysis for Holistic Insights

We’ve enhanced our PPC Performance Report to include more campaign types, ensuring all your efforts are accounted for. While the report previously focused on Search and Display campaigns, it now covers Shopping, Video, Hotel, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Local Services, and more

This expanded analysis offers a complete view of your advertising activity, enabling you to pinpoint growth opportunities and refine your strategies across multiple formats. Whether you’re managing Shopping campaigns or optimising Video ads, the report provides tailored recommendations to support your goals.

Why This Matters:

• Get detailed insights across all the formats you’re running, from Shopping to Video.
• Discover new growth opportunities across lesser-used or underperforming campaign types.
• Ensure your strategy reflects current advertising trends and best practices.

2. Fairer and More Accurate Scoring

We’ve also updated the scoring algorithm in our Performance Report to ensure it accurately reflects your campaign performance. The new system evaluates campaigns based on what you’re running, rather than penalising you for not using formats outside your strategy.

For example, if you’re not running Performance Max campaigns, your score won’t be negatively affected. This means you can focus on optimizing the campaigns that matter most to you or your clients without worrying about irrelevant recommendations impacting your evaluation.

Why This Matters:

• Scores are tailored to the specific campaigns you’re actively running.
• Avoid being penalised for not adopting campaign types that don’t align with your strategy.
• Gain a clear, fair picture of your current advertising performance.

3. Prioritised Recommendations for Faster Improvements

To help you focus your efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact, the Performance Report now prioritises recommendations dynamically. High-priority actions appear at the top of your report, allowing you to tackle the most important opportunities first.

For instance, if your Performance Max score drops due to inactive audience segments, the report will highlight this immediately, enabling you to make quick adjustments. This prioritization ensures you can take targeted actions to improve performance without spending time on less critical issues.

Why This Matters:

• Quickly identify and act on the most impactful recommendations.
• Save time by focusing your efforts on high-priority areas.
• Streamline your workflow with clear guidance on where to start.

How to Get Started with Your Updated Report

These updates make Adzooma’s PPC Performance Report a more powerful tool for managing campaigns across platforms. By expanding campaign analysis, refining scoring, and prioritising recommendations, we’re making it easier to identify opportunities and take meaningful action.

To explore these updates:

1. Sign up to Adzooma or login to your account
2. Connect your ad accounts to Adzooma.
3. Run your updated PPC Performance Report.
4. Use the tailored recommendations to refine your campaigns and improve your results.

Get started today and see how these insights can help you achieve better outcomes from your advertising efforts.

In this article, we’ll review best practices for Microsoft Shopping Campaign structures and explore the benefits, the different ways you can set them up, and how they can help you make the most of this crucial period.

1. Segment by Audience

Tailoring your campaigns based on audience is a powerful way to ensure that you’re targeting the right people at the right stage of the customer journey. By creating separate campaigns for different audiences – prospecting (new customers) and retargeting (existing customers) – you can deliver more relevant and effective ads, whilst strategically controlling your investment.

Best Practices for Segmenting by Audience:

• Prospecting Campaigns: Target new customers using In-Market Audiences to reach users who are actively considering products similar to yours.
• Existing Customers: Utilise Remarketing, Custom Audiences, and Product Audiences to re-engage users who have interacted with your brand or made past purchases. Customer Match can be particularly effective in delivering personalised ads to high-value customers.

The Benefits:

• Efficiency: Align your Microsoft Shopping Campaigns with your broader audience strategy, ensuring consistency across shopping, audience, and search campaigns.
• Coverage: Reach users at each step of the conversion funnel, from awareness to conversion.

2. Query Funnelling

Query funnelling is another smart approach for structuring your shopping campaigns. By separating brand and non-brand queries, you can create a more nuanced bidding strategy that targets users based on their search intent.

How to Set It Up:

• Non-brand Campaign: High priority, lower bids, with negative keywords excluding product names and brand terms.
• Brand Campaign: Medium priority with higher bids and negative keywords for generic terms.
• Catch-all Campaign: Low priority with the highest bids and no negative keywords.

The Benefits:

• Consistency: Manage your shopping campaigns similarly to search campaigns by segmenting brand traffic from non-brand traffic.
• Efficiency: Take advantage of typically lower CPCs (cost-per-click) for branded queries while focusing budget where it’s needed most.
• Competitiveness: Bid more aggressively on non-brand queries, increasing your share of the market for generic searches.

3. Segment by Product Category

This structure is ideal for ecommerce businesses with large and diverse product catalogues. By segmenting your campaigns based on your website’s product categories, you can create a structure that mirrors your site navigation and allows for more granular bidding.

Best Practices for Segmenting by Product Category:

• Set higher bids for more granular product groupings as these tend to convert more effectively during the Q4 rush.
• Create separate product groups for each product category, brand, or even SKU level.

The Benefits:

• Consistency: This structure allows for easier troubleshooting and adjustments since it aligns with the way products are categorised on your website.
• Scalability: Works well for businesses of any size and can accommodate small or large product catalogues.
• Detailed Reporting: Enables 1:1 reporting for each product category, making it easier to analyse performance and optimise accordingly.
• Flexibility: Easily expand your structure as new product categories or brands are added to your feed.

4. Segment by Profitability

Profitability-based segmentation is a strategic approach that focuses on grouping products based on their performance metrics, such as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This allows you to prioritise investment towards products that generate the most revenue, and likely the most profit.

How to Set It Up:

• Group products by their profitability levels and assign higher bids to more profitable / higher ROAS products, particularly during peak shopping seasons.
• Regularly monitor low-inventory items, and move products between ad groups by adjusting feed labels.

The Benefits:

• Profit Maximisation: Allocate more budget to high-performing products and increase bids for top sellers to maximise profitability.
• Responsiveness: Quickly adjust bids and budgets in real time based on stock levels and sales performance.
• Detailed Analysis: Pull SKU-level reports to see which products are driving the most profit and make informed decisions about bid adjustments.

Differences Between Google & Microsoft Shopping Campaign Structures

When structuring your campaigns, it’s crucial to understand that while granular structures work well on Google Shopping, they may not always be necessary for Microsoft Shopping Campaigns. Microsoft’s lower search volume means that broad categories can be effective, but bids should still be adjusted separately for each platform to account for different CPCs and performance dynamics.

Best Practices for Microsoft Shopping Campaign Structure

As we head into Q4, here are a few general best practices to keep in mind:

• Campaign Priorities: Consider your campaign priority alongside your structural approach, especially when adding new campaigns.
• Bids: Start with bids higher than the minimum (around £0.30 to £1.00), as this will help your ads gain visibility quickly in a competitive environment.
• Monitor Untargeted Offers: Regularly check the Merchant Centre for any untargeted offers and update your campaign structure as needed.

Conclusion

As we move into Q4, the right Microsoft Shopping Campaign structure can make or break your seasonal performance. Remember, a flexible and responsive approach allows for real-time adjustments and ensures that your campaigns remain competitive in an ever-evolving marketplace. With these best practices in mind, your shopping campaigns will be set to capitalise on this crucial period, driving both revenue and long-term business growth.

1. Leverage Multi-Channel Reach for Maximum Impact

Microsoft PMax isn’t just about Search – it’s a fully integrated campaign type that reaches users across multiple platforms, including a number of search engines, Microsoft properties such as Microsoft Start, and the wide-reaching Audience Network. In other words, you’re not limited to a single channel or type of ad placement, so this makes it the perfect solution for those end-of-year campaigns when you want to spread your message far and wide.

With Microsoft PMax, you simply provide your creative assets such as images, headlines, and descriptions, and the system uses machine learning to automatically build and place ads in the most effective placements. This allows you to reach users in various contexts, whether they’re searching, reading news, or checking their emails, making it an efficient way to spend your remaining budget without the need for detailed campaign planning.

Here’s What to Do:

• Create a range of high-quality assets, including images, headlines, and descriptions. Microsoft will mix and match them to create winning combinations.
• Let the algorithm do the heavy lifting. The automation behind PMax ensures that your budget is allocated where it’s most effective, saving you time and effort.

2. Target Your Highest-Value Audiences with LinkedIn

One of the key benefits of Microsoft Performance Max is its integration with LinkedIn, a goldmine for B2B advertisers. As you race to finish the year strong, now is the perfect time to hone in on decision-makers and professionals who are likely planning their 2024 budgets. Whether you’re targeting job titles, industries, or even specific companies, LinkedIn’s precision targeting can help you hit those high-value users through Microsoft Advertising that are more likely to convert.

By focusing on professionals, you’re making the most of Microsoft’s unique positioning in the B2B space. It’s not just about showing ads to more people – it’s about showing them to the right people at the right time. With budgets needing to be spent, decision-makers are often looking for solutions to carry into the new year, and your ad could be just what they’re seeking.

Here’s What to Do:

• Use LinkedIn’s targeting options to reach decision-makers and high-value professionals who are likely to be planning for the future.
• Use remarketing to re-engage your B2B audience throughout long procurement processes, keeping your brand top-of-mind as they move through the decision-making cycle.

3. Push Seasonal Offers with Urgency

End-of-year campaigns thrive on urgency. Shoppers and business buyers alike are used to seeing ‘last chance’ offers, and they respond to them. Microsoft Performance Max allows you to tap into this urgency by running ads across its network that communicate deadlines and seasonal promotions. Whether it’s a special discount, a year-end clearance, or a time-sensitive service offer, the ability to serve ads across search, display, and native formats ensures that your message gets noticed.

Your job is to create the kind of messaging that makes people take action now. Make your promotions clear, emphasising limited-time, and value. Don’t beat around the bush – let your audience know exactly what they’ll get and what they need to do to take advantage of your offer. Microsoft PMax will do the rest, pushing your ads where they’re most likely to convert.

What to Focus On:

• Highlight the urgency in your copy – ‘Last chance,’ ‘Ends soon,’ or ‘Limited time only’ will encourage immediate action.
• Feature your best offers front and centre, and use simple, bold language to cut through the noise.

4. Optimise Budget Allocation with Microsoft’s Automation

One of the biggest advantages of Microsoft Performance Max is the ability to optimise budget allocation automatically. You don’t have to worry about fine-tuning every single ad placement or bid – Microsoft’s machine learning does the work for you, ensuring your budget is spent where it’s most likely to drive results. This is a lifesaver when you’re working with a fixed budget that needs to be spent before the year ends.

The system continuously evaluates performance across all channels and adjusts bids, placements, and even creative combinations based on real-time data. This ensures that your money goes further, delivering conversions across the surfaces chosen by Microsoft’s algorithm.

Here’s How to Make It Work:

• Set clear conversion goals for your campaign – whether that’s lead generation, purchases, or bookings, Miicrosoft PMax will optimise towards these goals.
• Let the automation handle the rest. The system will automatically shift budget between search, display, and native ads to maximise your return.

5. Capitalise on Year-End Search Behaviour

As the year draws to a close, buying behaviors shift significantly. Many consumers actively search for solutions, products and services to wrap up the year and prepare for the next. For instance, 52% of Bing shoppers conduct research before making a purchase, with 47% falling within the 18-44 age range. This demographic is keen on finding the best prices and discovering deals, with 52% prioritising price comparisons across retailers and 30% looking for new items.

Microsoft Performance Max enables you to take advantage of these trends by displaying your ads across the Microsoft network, including Bing Search, which experiences heightened activity during this period. By combining search, display, and native ads on platforms like Microsoft Start and Co Pilot, you can effectively engage with users at various stages of their purchasing journey, ensuring that your offerings resonate with the audience as they seek the best options to close out the year.

To Leverage Seasonal Search:

• Optimise your keywords and targeting for year-end behaviour. Think about the kinds of products, services, or solutions that are in high demand during this time.
• Match your ad copy to deal-hunting behaviors. Focus on the excitement of seasonal sales and promotions, such as Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Boxing Day. Highlight limited-time offers and discounts to capture the attention of shoppers looking for the best deals as they prepare for the new year.

Conclusion: Finishing the Year Strong with Microsoft Performance Max

The final stretch of the year is the time to make your marketing budget work overtime. Microsoft Performance Max provides a robust, multi-channel approach that helps you spread your message across the entire Microsoft network, reaching professionals, shoppers, and business decision-makers alike. With precision targeting, the automation of budget allocation, and the ability to create urgency with seasonal offers, this campaign type is the perfect tool to ensure you’re spending your budget wisely and driving results right up until the clock strikes midnight on 31st December.

Your Final Steps:

• Prepare your creative assets and get them ready to be distributed across multiple channels.
• Set clear goals for your campaigns and let Microsoft’s automation take care of the rest.
• Allow the algorithm to build momentum – initial volumes may take a little time to pick up, but the results will follow!

With the right strategy, you can turn that leftover budget into meaningful results, helping you close the year on a high note and set yourself up for success in the new year.

1. Audience Reach and Platforms

One of the biggest differences between Google’s and Microsoft’s PMax campaigns is the available inventory. Google’s Performance Max connects you to Google’s network, including Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. 

Microsoft’s Performance Max on the other hand, taps into the Microsoft Audience Network, reaching users across search engines like Bing, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo, as well as platforms like Microsoft Start and Microsoft Edge. It’s a solid option for targeting both general consumers and high-intent users, offering a reach comparable to Google’s Display Network, but with Microsoft’s unique ecosystem benefits.

2. Ad Formats and Creative Assets

Google PMax leverages your creative assets – images, videos, headlines, and descriptions – mixing them to generate optimised ads across its entire network. The ability to serve these assets across channels such as Search, YouTube, and Gmail means you’ll need to upload a mixture of text, image, and video assets so Google can build multiple formats

Similarly, Microsoft PMax uses creative assets across its ecosystem, blending static, native, and multimedia ad formats. The advantage here lies in merging native advertising with traditional display formats, creating a seamless user experience.

3. Reporting and Insights

When it comes to reporting, both Google and Microsoft offer comprehensive dashboards to track your campaign performance

Google provides extensive reporting, offering insights across all channels – Search, YouTube, Display, and more. With granular data on platform performance, audience segments, and creative assets, Google’s reports give you a holistic view of your campaigns and where they perform best.

Microsoft offers detailed reporting as well, particularly in terms of individual platform performance (like Bing, Microsoft Start and Co Pilot) and audience segmentation. Microsoft’s reports are highly actionable, making it easier to adjust campaigns based on specific audience behavior.

4. Cost and Budget Allocation

Google’s PMax campaigns tend to be more expensive due to the scale of its reach. With so many advertisers bidding across a variety of high-traffic platforms, CPCs (cost-per-click) tend to be higher. However, Google’s automation ensures you’re getting optimised results for your budget.

Microsoft’s PMax campaigns are generally more cost-effective, with CPCs being lower due to less competition. While the overall audience size may be smaller compared to Google, Microsoft’s ability to deliver targeted ads across both search and display can help advertisers get more value for their budget, especially if their target audience is already browsing across Microsoft properties.

5. Attribution Models and Conversion Tracking

Google uses a data-driven attribution (DDA) model, which aims to distribute credit across touchpoints based on their contribution to conversions. However, this approach has drawn mixed feedback from advertisers, as it can sometimes feel less transparent, leading to confusion over how exactly conversions are being attributed. 

In contrast, Microsoft provides more straightforward reporting options, including models like last-click and linear attribution. This allows advertisers to retain clarity, especially with last-click data, giving a clearer, more intuitive view of which touchpoints are driving conversions. While Microsoft is expanding its focus on multi-touch attribution, it currently offers a more transparent way to analyze campaign performance.

Final Thoughts: Why You Should Test Both

It’s not about choosing which platform is better, but about understanding how each can support your campaign goals. Testing both Google and Microsoft PMax will allow you to identify the best fit for your needs.

• Google’s Performance Max offers unparalleled reach, sophisticated automation, and multi-channel integration – perfect for businesses seeking broad consumer outreach and automated management across multiple touchpoints.
• Microsoft’s Performance Max provides a cost-effective alternative with lower costs and access to a high-intent audience across multiple search engines and other display placements. While it may have a smaller overall reach, it excels at reaching targeted users and delivering high-value results for budget-conscious campaigns.

By testing both platforms and leveraging their unique strengths, you’ll optimise your campaigns and drive the results that matter most to your business.