Microsoft Advertising expands LinkedIn Profile, dynamic remarketing, in-market audience targeting

Microsoft is rolling out more access to three of its audiences targeting options. Here’s the rundown of what’s new.

LinkedIn profile targeting expands. Microsoft first opened LinkedIn Profile data for targeting on Bing in 2018, about two years after the company acquired LinkedIn. The beta was available in the U.S. With this release, LinkedIn Profile targeting by job function, industry and/or company are available for Search and Audience campaigns (for those with access) in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, France and Germany.

You can also use campaign bid modifiers for the specific industries or job functions of your target customers. The data encompasses more than 100 industries and 80,000 companies globally, according to Microsoft.

Dynamic remarketing for Shopping out of beta. After debuting last year, dynamic remarketing (formerly dubbed product audiences) is now out of beta.

When you associate a dynamic remarketing list with a Shopping campaign, you can retarget visitors to your site with Shopping ads of the products they viewed.

There are five types of dynamic remarketing lists currently supported. You can target general visitors to your product pages, product searchers, product viewers, shopping cart abandoners or past buyers.

Be sure to update your UET (universal event tracking) tag to include the custom events you want to track based on the types of lists you’re using.

Microsoft says the lists are kept current in near real-time. Customers are removed from Dynamic Remarketing lists “within minutes of purchasing a product” so you don’t wind up wasting ad spend (and annoying them) by showing the same ad. This is similar to Google Ads’ shopping retargeting lists.

In-market audiences in France, Germany. You can now use in-market audiences when targeting ad in France and Germany to reach users who have indicated purchase intent for certain products based on their search history and page views on Microsoft services.

You can associate in-market audiences with ad groups or campaigns.

There are more than 100 French audiences and more than 200 German audiences in verticals such as apparel, auto, financial services, home and garden and travel.

In the U.S., Microsoft added 47 new in-market audiences in July. There are now more than 700 in-market audiences available for the U.S.

Why we care. These audience targeting capabilities can help you both expand and refine your targeting and improve performance. LinkedIn Profile targeting is a capability unique to Microsoft Advertising. See the full blog post for more details on setting up these audiences.