Good morning, the sponsored products landscape just got a bit more interesting.

Microsoft has acquired New York-based PromoteIQ, a platform that enables brands to run sponsored product ads on retailers’ e-commerce sites. Kroger, Kohl’s and Office Depot are among the retailers already signed on to have PromoteIQ manage their sponsored ads programs. Advertisers running ads through the platform include P&G, Kraft, Sony, HP and Unilever. HookLogic had offered a similar program before being acquired by Criteo a few years ago for a reported $250 million. Terms of the PromoteIQ deal have not been disclosed.

Advertisers can already run product ads on Bing.com, of course, but the PromoteIQ offering will give Microsoft Advertising a broader footprint across a network of large retailers, expand advertiser reach and scale to compete better with Google, Walmart and Amazon’s sponsored products programs. Advertisers can track product views and sales from the PromoteIQ analytics dashboard. 

Beyond advertising, the retail vertical is an area of focus for Microsoft. Rik van der Kooi, corporate vice president of Microsoft Advertising, said with this acquisition, “we can enable retailers with a portfolio of technology solutions to modernize their e-commerce platforms and maximize their monetization opportunity.” The PromoteIQ brand will continue as a division of Microsoft Advertising. 

In his latest video interview, Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz sat down with Senior Partner, Head of SEO at Catalyst, Paul Shapiro to chat technical SEO, natural language processing and SEO testing. “We deal with a lot of uncertainty in SEO,” said Paul, and “reliance on best practices isn’t always the best course of action. It behooves us to actually test things.” Watch the full interview here.

Read on for a Pro Tip on optimizing for Amazon, Search Shorts and more. 

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief