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Microsoft acquired LinkedIn back in 2016. And if you are knowledgeable about the PPC industry, there are a few questions that would pop-up in your mind upon hearing that. Are Bing Ads compatible with LinkedIn? Can we target our ads to those users? The answer to those remained a firm “no” for the longest time- until now.

This year, Bing Ads introduced their new product — Audience Campaigns — which allows advertisers to target their audience by using the rich user-data from LinkedIn on their network. That’s a massive step for Bing Ads and a big opportunity for you. Audience Campaigns allow you to target people in their 50’s who work at Apple in a Finance-related position, perhaps with some background as entrepreneurs, too. The feature is already available, but only for a selected number of accounts. Expectations are that these campaigns would be released altogether by the end of Q4 2018.

You probably already have a lot of questions. What is an Audience Campaign? How does that even work? The purpose of this article is to help you grasp a great understanding of the functionalities for these campaigns and to teach you how to use this new product at your advantage.

As certified partners, White Shark Media has worked collaboratively with Bing Ads on testing this new campaign type, and we are here to share all the excitement for this quarter. Let’s take a sneak peak.

Targeting

I want to start with the most compelling feature: New Targeting Methods. Here they are:

The targeting methods are set per ad group, and each of these methods is compatible with one another. For instance, you may have an ad group that targets employees from many well-known brands such as the companies listed in the Inc. 500. Let’s name our new ad group “Companies.” Then, another group may target individuals that fall in the category of Finance, which we will label “Industries.”

Assuming that you sell houses in Jackson Hole, WY, you realize that the right audience for your business is investors with +55 years of age who are about to retire with enough money to buy a high-priced house. In that case, you may want to combine multiple targeting methods in one ad group and launch your ads under this criteria.

Additionally, you decide to launch an In-Market Audience ruled-based on observation, meaning that you don’t require your audience to be interested in Real Estate to showcase your ad, but, if they are, you may want to bid 50% higher on them, for they more relevant and valuable.

Notice how specific that is. Very interesting, isn’t it? It gets even better. You may then populate an audience list for remarketing built off these high-quality users to re-target them either with the same Audience Campaign or a regular Search Campaign, RLSA. Selling a house has a long converting path, people don’t just buy houses within a week, and that is why remarketing plays an important role here. Then, our targeting path would look as follows:

Your Audience Campaign would target new users that fall under your set of rules. Then, every user will automatically populate your recently created Remarketing List. As soon as your list has enough people, you will be able to run new remarketing campaigns, Search or Audience Campaigns, making sure these valuable individuals remember you and go back to your site in order to convert.

Where are My Ads Triggered?

The ads would appear on MSN, Outlook, Microsoft EDGE, and other partners. Here is a short preview for each one of these:

The ad spots are not limited to the examples revealed above. You may still be able to showcase your banner ads on the sides of an article related to Home Listings, for instance. Or, you may be able to re-target the CEOs of prestigious companies right at their inbox. Ha!

Let’s dive a little bit more about the type of ads that you may run.

Ad Formats and Specs

First, the Audience Campaigns support the same banner ad dimensions as of other marketing platforms out there, like Google, Facebook, etc. The design, on the other hand, should not have any text preferably, your ad format will have text boxes available separately. Check out this preview:

Important: What to Take From This

This post focuses on a fictitious company that may not be related to your industry. Your business objectives are entirely different and unique; the same is the case for your marketing strategy and business model.

You need the opinion of certified experts that will analyze and evaluate your business, creating a well-structured plan of action for your business similarly to this post’s example. We have a dedicated team of professionals to help you build the right strategy.