What is Open Beta for New Automotive Ads — Microsoft Advertising Update

Advertising is a marketing strategy that most businesses often incorporate in their business growth strategies. Advertising is important to attract new, genuine and interested customers towards the products and services that you provide. Digital marketing service providers are adapting new strategies in order to increase your digital reach and get a higher rank in the search optimization programs.

Microsoft recently launched an open beta for Automotive Ads, a new ad unit. Microsoft conducted a case study to showcase a positive linear relationship between paid search clicks and automotive sales, with 99% statistical significance. What is more important that we should look upon for this case study conducted to understand digital marketing services is that the research cited that brands earn 2.1x more clicks with the paid ads versus those relying on organic alone. Now, they’re introducing a new way for automotive advertisers to drive those clicks.

If you’re an automotive advertiser or have social media marketing company. Then you know how important it is both native and paid search advertisements can be for driving quality clicks to your website and increasing vehicle sales. Microsoft automotive advertising is a digital marketing service that will help you to achieve the same.

What are automotive Ads?

Automotive Ads are feed-based product ads (similar to shopping ads), where attributes are uploaded via a feed. The ads will then be delivered for queries that are matched to the feed, such as vehicle research and purchase intent queries. Dissimilar from shopping ads, Automotive Ads won’t require a merchant center, as the feed will be uploaded directly into the advertiser’s Microsoft Advertising account.

It has the following features: -

More volume: Reach new car shoppers who are closer to making a purchase and are in the comparison and transaction stages of the consumer decision journey.

Richer experience: Showcase your vehicle photos, prices, and more to help increase your click-through-rate (CTR) and qualified leads.

Save time with automation: Use feeds with keyword-less campaigns to generate your ads faster and easily keep those ads accurate as inventory and prices change. No need to tie your feed to Bing Places.

According to John Lee, Microsoft advertising head of Evangelism- one feed will allow you to target multiple points in the customer’s journey because Automotive ads can be leveraged in both SERP and native placements. He believes that if you are targeting IN-market audiences and you engage a prospect with the native Ad. It piques their interest so then they do a search and now search ad and your automotive Ad from the feed. “they may not have considered this vehicle before, but after seeing your automotive Ad on native and clicking through on search now they are in your funnel.”

This new platform launched by Microsoft can be very beneficial for promoting your Automotive. If you also make the optimum use of this platform you can avail best digital marketing service providers in order to get help for your company.

What does this Automotive ad look like?

Microsoft’s Automotive Ads are triggered in both search and Bing image searches for purchase intent searches and vehicle research. For the pilot program, the ads will show on the right rail of searches on Bing or above the images in vehicle-research-related images searches.

Currently, within Bing’s SERP, Microsoft Ads delivers Automotive Ads on the right rail and also on the Bing image results page. Microsoft is planning to begin delivering Automotive Ads on the mainline (just under the search bar) soon, as well.

It is considered the best representational strategy by most social media marketing companies.

How can you also participate?

Automotive Ads are eligible to run alongside existing search campaigns for the same queries, meaning advertisers are eligible to have both ad types (Automotive Ads and a search ad) delivering in the SERP for the same ad auction.

With the pandemic putting a damper on public transit, the automotive industry continued to fare well while other verticals may have seen larger sales dips. Factories closing caused a shortage of new vehicles meaning existing inventory was lower for dealers and used vehicles were in much higher demand.

To sign up for the open beta for Automotive Ads, you first need to either reach out to your Microsoft Advertising rep or use this link to enroll.

Once you’re in the beta, you’ll need to provide a feed. A comprehensive feed with rich car attributes is critical for your success with Automotive Ads. Here’s what you’ll need and what we recommend:

Must Haves: Vehicle Id, Title, Make, Model, Year, Trim, Final URL, Image URLs, State of Vehicle (New/Used/CPO)

Good to have: Body Style, Engine, Drivetrain, Transmission, Fuel Type, Interior Color, Exterior Color to provide the best images possible, make sure they’re high-quality and relevant. Here are some recommendations:

• Your images must be relevant to the listed vehicle, ad, and landing page.
• Use distinct vehicle images for different trims to ensure variety, maybe vehicles with different exterior colors.
• Your images should show a zoomed exterior view of the vehicle (either front view, side view, or back view). If there are multiple images in the URL, ensure that the first few images are exterior views (additional images can be interior views).
• Your images should not have any watermarks or promotional text.
• If you’ve updated the image, be sure to update the image URL for the new image to be reflected in the ad.

Source: https://faidepro.medium.com/what-is-open-beta-for-new-automotive-ads-microsoft-advertising-update-67087ed5c9f9