Microsoft Content Ads To Open To All US Advertisers August 29

Microsoft just announced that ContentAds will be open to all US advertisers on August 29th.

Advertisers who have not yet participated in the ContentAds program will automatically be opted into the network on that date. So if you do not want your ads to run on Microsoft’s content network, which might be likely, fill out this web form by August 26th.

From the release:

Those advertisers who haven’t been participating in the Content Ads pilot will automatically be upgraded to include distribution on content pages within the Microsoft network. Advertisers whose campaigns are upgraded will have complete control over their campaigns and have the following choices:

– Hybrid: Run ads on Live Search and content pages using “hybrid” ad groups.
— Existing ad groups will automatically be set to display on content pages at current search ad bid prices. You can also set new bids for your content clicks.
– Turn off Content Ads.
— At the ad group level: Within the Ad Group Settings tab, under the Targeting section, click the Select a distribution method for this ad group link, and clear the Content check box.
— At the campaign level: On the Campaigns tab, select the check boxes next to those campaigns you’d like to edit. Click Bulk Edit. In the Edit settings for multiple campaigns section, from the Campaign settings drop-down list, select Content distribution, and click Apply. Please note that once you have turned off content distribution via Bulk Edit, you will have to manually adjust each ad group if you wish to turn content distribution back on in the future.
– Create content-only and search-only ad groups.
— You can create a unique destination URL or have content-specific ad creative.