Microsoft Ads (again) extends RSA migration to Feb. 2023

Advertisers now have five additional months to migrate their expanded text ads to RSAs.

The new extended deadline. In April we reported that Microsoft was extending the original June 30 deadline to August 29. Today Microsoft announced that they were once again, extending that deadline to February 1, 2023. Microsoft says the extension is in response to advertisers need for more time.

Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) will continue to serve with RSAs but advertisers will no longer be able to create new or edit existing ETAs.

What Microsoft says. Microsoft says that advertisers who have switched from ETAs to RSAs see an average of 7% conversion rate improvement in their performance.

You can read the announcement here.

RSA best practices. If you’re still migrating your ads, Microsoft suggests the following best practices:

• Ensure all your ad groups have at least one RSA
• Use the Recommendations tab to add AI generated RSAs based on your existing ETA assets.
• Use auto-apply recommendations to help automate implementations
• Use the Google import tool to mirror Google ad campaigns

Why we care. Advertisers who haven’t migrated their campaigns yet have a few more months to get it done. Microsoft won’t support ETAs after February, so migrating as soon as possible will help prevent your ads from being auto-updated, or dropping in performance.