How Microsoft Advertising is harnessing its legacy and generative AI to provide full funnel advertising solutions | Partner Content
In the last decade, digital technology has seen unprecedented growth at a global level, revolutionising several industries including the business of marketing and advertising.
The latest CMO survey1 from Deloitte, Duke FUQUA and the American Marketing Association reveals that in 73% of companies, marketers have been asked to lead broader digital transformation. Central to this transformation is the imperative to align with digitised consumer purchasing behaviours and to deepen process insights through data analytics. Currently, over two-thirds of organisations are investing in digital media such as search (69%) and data analytics (66%). The survey predicts a 220% growth in using AI for optimisation and 37.7% CMOs expect to be doing so in the next three years.
Key catalysts driving digital transformation in enterprises include:
A complex media landscape: Consumers are diversifying their media consumption across various platforms and devices. Businesses should adapt to these multifaceted patterns.
Consumer behaviour shifting online: As consumer preferences pivot from offline to online, there is an escalating demand for tailored advertising experiences.
AI implementation: The advent of AI has significantly enhanced advertising efficiency and impact. Harnessing AI’s full technological potential to foster enterprise and advertiser growth remains an industry challenge.
For brands, it is crucial to disseminate ads across multiple devices and formats, ensuring consumer reach while maintaining precise ad effectiveness measurement. Full-funnel advertising addresses this need by offering brand owners integrated data monitoring, strategic planning, and audience engagement, all while delivering a superior ad experience to consumers. Within this space, Microsoft Advertising is leveraging its ecosystem strengths and AI technology to forge a progressive trajectory for the industry.
With the integration of Generative AI, New Bing has redefined the search experience, marking the most significant performance advancement in two decades. It has accelerated past 100 million daily active users, with over a billion chats in just three months, working in 100 plus languages across 169 countries. This innovative search approach has garnered global user engagement, evidenced by the growth in Bing and Edge browser usage.
Furthermore, Microsoft Advertising has expedited its foray into the global digital advertising market through advanced audience targeting, and retail media, broadening its scope beyond traditional search. Its exclusive partnership with Netflix — the world’s premier entertainment service, the transformative impact of AI-powered Bing, and a collaboration with social media company Snap to power chat ads, exemplifies a commitment to innovation.
Microsoft Advertising thus synergises the prowess of its established search practice, business networks, gaming platforms, news publishers, operating systems, and browsers with a comprehensive ad tech stack encompassing native, display, video, CTV (Connected TV), and retail media. As Landy Huang, regional vice president of the Microsoft advertising business in China said, “Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. With a 30-year deep-rooted presence in the China market, we have delivered quality products and services to a myriad of industry clients.”
Embracing this mission, Microsoft Advertising will capitalise on the ‘Microsoft Matrix’ to integrate AI innovations, tailor solutions for advertisers, seize market opportunities, enhance advertising efficacy, and bolster the global presence of Chinese enterprises.
The Microsoft Advertising ecosystem
Microsoft’s advertising ecosystem boasts a vast scale on the advertiser and publisher front. Microsoft’s search and audience networks work with over 400,000 advertisers representing 100% of the Fortune 100 companies. Additionally, over 5,000 advertisers engage with its retail media. For CTV, it provides access to over 860 publishers and 1,500 native, display, and video publishers. On the buyside, its ecosystem represents over 193,000 brands.
Microsoft Advertising’s transformed ecosystem redefines audience connection, enabling interactions at any digital journey touchpoint.
Diverse solutions for advertiser success
The shift in consumer content consumption necessitates a departure from single-channel strategies. Microsoft unites its best offerings to meet this need, standing as a global-scale, multi-format advertising entity catering to buyers and sellers across its owned media, partner media, and open networks. This ecosystem fosters limitless possibilities to achieve goals in previously unimaginable ways.
Collectively, Microsoft Advertising’s solutions empower advertisers to connect with audiences everywhere, both within and beyond the ecosystem. It provides publishers with diverse monetisation avenues across search, programmatic, data, and retail media, bolstered by Microsoft search and Microsoft monetise platforms.
Microsoft Advertising: Pioneering technology and innovating for tomorrow
When we think about innovation at Microsoft, AI immediately comes to mind. Microsoft’s advancements in AI align with the company mission ‘to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more’. The investment in AI spans the entire company, from Teams and Outlook to Bing and Xbox. Generative AI can be a game changer, and Microsoft is just at the beginning of exploring how to unlock its potential for customers and advertisers alike.
Advertisers continually seek efficiency, and Microsoft’s Performance Max campaign automation brings together the best processes to maximise conversions. Even as advertisers craft their strategies with objectives, assets, and insights, AI dynamically tailors and optimises ads across Microsoft Advertising surfaces for peak performance. This unified approach offers a streamlined, multi-format, cross-channel optimisation framework, delivering enhanced conversions and AI-driven recommendations.
Microsoft Advertising uses the potential of generative AI to achieve a deep understanding of user context and intent, giving advertisers unique advantages such as:
Enhanced audience expansion: Microsoft Advertising is broadening its reach, particularly among younger demographics and mobile users, to amplify audience size and engagement.
Elevated relevance: Through deeper conversational interactions and personalised responses, Microsoft Advertising is cultivating a more nuanced understanding of user intent. This translates to a heightened return on investment (ROI) for marketing initiatives.
Customised ad experiences: The platform enables real-time ad customisation for individual users. By automating campaign workflows and assets, it streamlines processes and saves valuable time for clients.
Microsoft has achieved significant milestones in generative AI and is committed to furthering this progress. By channelling investments into critical business areas, it aims to revolutionise its advertising solutions making them more efficient and accurate. In an ever-changing market, Microsoft Advertising will continue to lead the development of the industry, promoting innovative technology, and providing customers and partners with a new advertising service model.
