Microsoft Advertising Adds AI Visibility Insights, PMax Testing, And Creative Preview Updates via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson
Webinar How Freshpet Earned AI's Trust The GEO playbook behind Freshpet's AI Overview citations, plus checks to run on your own brand. Free, live Aug 20. Rundown Inside AI Max, PMax & Smart Bidding What to measure, which signals to prioritize, and how to guide automation before AI Max becomes the default. Rundown Earn AI Citations: A 4-Article Playbook Learn which signals AI engines actually reward and how to build content systems designed for AI visibility. Webinar How Freshpet Earned AI's Trust The GEO playbook behind Freshpet's AI Overview citations, plus checks to run on your own brand. Free, live Aug 20. Live Workshop The AI Search Playbook. What's Actually Driving Traffic Now. The AI Search Playbook. What's Actually Driving Traffic Now. 🔥[Live 8/12 with Loren Baker] Ecommerce SEO: Own your "brand +promo code" search. Microsoft Advertising expands AI Visibility, Performance Max testing, and Ad Preview Hub with new reporting, experimentation, and creative review capabilities. Rather than focusing on entirely new products, the August update expands existing tools with additional reporting, experimentation, and workflow improvements. Together, the updates provide a clearer picture of how Microsoft expects advertisers to measure AI visibility, evaluate Performance Max, and review creative before campaigns launch. Read on to understand what this means for your Microsoft Ads campaigns. Microsoft is expanding its AI Visibility reporting in Clarity with Topic Insights. The new reports group AI citations by subject, allowing advertisers to see which topics AI systems associate with their brand, how frequently those topics appear, and where they may have gaps in coverage. The feature builds on the AI Visibility reporting Microsoft introduced earlier this year by adding another layer of analysis. Instead of reviewing individual citations, advertisers can identify the topics driving those citations and how AI systems understand their content. Microsoft also outlined how advertisers can apply those insights to paid search. They recommend comparing grounding queries with existing search terms, identifying opportunities for new keywords and negative keywords, and adjusting landing pages or ad creative based on competitive AI citation data. Those recommendations suggest Microsoft views AI visibility reporting as useful beyond organic search by encouraging advertisers to use those insights when optimizing paid campaigns. While Topic Insights focuses on understanding AI visibility, Microsoft’s next set of updates centers on measuring the impact of AI-powered campaign automation. Performance Max has become one of Microsoft’s primary AI-powered campaign types, but measuring its incremental impact remains one of the biggest questions for advertisers. Together, the two experiment types give advertisers a structured way to evaluate whether Performance Max improves results before making broader campaign changes. The approach also aligns with Microsoft’s recent emphasis on experimentation and measurement across its AI-powered products. Microsoft continues to cite an average 8% increase in incremental conversions from Performance Max campaigns. While these experiments focus on measuring campaign performance, Microsoft’s next update gives advertisers more visibility into how Performance Max creative will appear before launch. Ad Preview Hub previously allowed advertisers to preview Audience ads before launch. The August update extends that functionality to Performance Max while adding Bing Search results page previews. The expansion could simplify campaign approvals for agencies and in-house teams that rely on creative, legal, or brand reviews before launch. Teams can generate shareable preview links showing how ads may appear before campaigns go live rather than relying on screenshots captured after ads begin serving. The addition of Bing SERP previews also gives reviewers visibility into Search placements alongside Audience inventory. Because Performance Max automatically assembles and serves ads across multiple placements, previewing creative before launch can help advertisers identify formatting issues, messaging inconsistencies, or stakeholder concerns before campaigns begin serving. Taken together with Topic Insights and the new Performance Max experiments, the Ad Preview Hub update reinforces Microsoft’s recent focus on expanding the tools that support AI-powered campaigns, not just the campaign types themselves. Looking at these updates together, they point to a consistent pattern across Microsoft’s recent product releases. Rather than introducing entirely new campaign types, Microsoft continues adding reporting, experimentation, and review capabilities around products advertisers are already using. Across the August updates, Microsoft focuses on helping advertisers answer three necessary questions: Each update pairs AI-powered automation with additional reporting, testing, or review capabilities. That gives advertisers more information before making campaign changes instead of relying solely on automated recommendations. During Microsoft Advertising Activate earlier this year, Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins described the company’s approach as “building with you, not just for you.” Assuming that direction continues, future Microsoft Advertising releases may focus less on introducing entirely new AI products and more on expanding the measurement, experimentation, and workflow tools surrounding them. Those supporting capabilities may have as much day-to-day impact as brand new product releases. Read Full Bio SEJ STAFF Brooke Osmundson Director of Growth Marketing at Smith Micro Software Brooke serves as the Director of Growth Marketing at Smith Micro Software, with over 10 years of paid media experience. ... Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. Insights From Microsoft Ads Partners: Copilot And PMax Google Ads: A Quick Guide To Every AI-Powered Ad Creative Feature (And What's Coming Soon) The State Of Performance Max: How To Optimize Google Ads In 2025 Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses -- and careers.
Source: Search Engine Journal
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