Sponsored Products

Use Sponsored Products to drive sales with a retailer or manufacturer.

Note

Sponsored Products are only available in the United States and are currently under open beta.

In Sponsored Products, two partners share the cost of advertising as they work to drive product sales through certain channels. Typically, these two partners are manufacturers and retailers (or ad agencies and their clients) who have merchandising agreements with one another.

How it works

Let's say you manufacture widgets, and Contoso is one of your many authorized dealers. Contoso wants to feature your widgets during their upcoming sale. They've approached you to partner on a marketing blitz of targeted ads designed to drive widget sales and conversions on their website. In partnership, you both agree to share the cost of clicks on a promoted product through your own ad group and your partner's own ad group.

Setting up Sponsored Products

Both the manufacturer and the retailer have key roles in setting up Sponsored Products. Manufacturers must upload a product feed. Retailers must grant their partners access to their Microsoft Merchant Center store, which is the gateway to a sales channel. Both manufacturers and retailers are then able to bid on the shared list of goods in the product feed through ad groups.

Step 1: Create a product feed expando image

Put simply, a product feed is a list of items you're promoting with a third party. Typically, a manufacturer or an advertising client is responsible for this step. A product feed contains a list of product attributes, such as product title, description, and price.

Use the product feed import template to create a list, which you'll need to upload to Microsoft Advertising following these steps:

In the left pane, click Shared Library.
Click Business data, and then click Product feeds.
In the Product feeds tab, click Upload feed.
Click Browse to open the upload window.
In the upload window, select your file and click Open.
Click Upload to create the product feed.

Here are the required and optional fields you can include in the product feed file. expando image

Field name	Description	What you need to know
id (required)	A unique identifier for the item. Example: ISI1 Requirements: 50 Unicode character limit. Recommended: ASCII only: alphanumeric, underscores (_), and dashes (-)	ID must be unique for each item in your catalog. If you have multiple feeds, IDs of items across different feeds still need to be unique. Special ASCII characters (for example, asterisk (*), comma (,), backslash (\), ampersand (&), etc. are allowed. The ID is the same as the merchant product ID (MPID).
brand (required)	Item’s manufacturer, brand, or publisher Example: Contoso Requirements: Alphanumeric 70 character limit	Do not add your store name as the brand unless you manufacture the product. We recommend to keep the brand character limit to 70, but it can be up to 1000 characters. Uploading an item for the first time will be pending review until the brand has been successfully crawled. Updating the brand of an existing item will be reverted to the pending review status until it has been successfully re-crawled. The review process can take up to 3 business days. Learn more about unique identifiers for your product ads.
mpn (required)	Manufacturer Part Number Example: ADNK-5020 Requirements: Alphanumeric, 70 character limit	MPN should be specific to one unique product. MPNs are assigned by the manufacturer. Learn more about unique identifiers for your product ads.
gtin (required)	Global Trade Item Number. The GTIN field has a limit of 50 characters, with each GTIN value having up to 14 digits. For multiple GTIN values, separate by a comma and space. Example: 00012345600012 Requirements: Numeric, 14 digits max per value, multi-value, 50 character limit	Learn more about unique identifiers for your product ads.
title	Title of the item Example: Women's shoes Requirements: Alphanumeric 150 character limit. Don't enclose in quotes.	Use relevant titles that match with what users are searching for with key information first in the title (for example, Women’s over the knee boots). When applicable, we recommend you include gender, size, color, material, and pattern details in title (for example, Women’s small red wool sweater). Include characteristics like color to differentiate from other products. Do not include promotional text (for example, Free shipping) or use all caps (for example, WOMEN’S SHOES). Uploading an item for the first time will be pending review until the offer title has been successfully reviewed. Updating the offer title of an existing item will be reverted to the pending review status until it has been successfully reviewed again. The review process can take up to 3 business days. The title of the item can be slightly different, but it must be for the same item. For mobile devices or tablets, the price can be 0, as the subsidized price with a contract is allowed. For such items, you must include the phrase "only with contract" (or similar) in the title. For mobile devices or tablets, the price can be 0 when payment options with multiple installments are allowed (US only). For such items, you must include the phrase "with installment plan" (or similar) in the title.
description	Item description Example: Bright yellow 100% cotton dress shirt Requirements: Alphanumeric 10000 character limit. No HTML code and no promotional text. Do not enclose in quotes.	The description from the landing page of your offer must be the same description as indicated in the feed. We recommend that you include size, color, and pattern when applicable. User relevant description with the most important data at the front. Uploading an item for the first time will be pending review until the description has been successfully reviewed. Updating the description of an existing item will be reverted to the pending review status until it has been successfully reviewed. The review process can take up to 3 business days. The description of the item can be slightly different, but it must be for the same item.
link	Direct URL of the item's page on your website Example: http://www.contoso.com/ product.asp?pn=ISI1 Requirements: 0-2000 characters HTTP or HTTPs only and no redirects. For redirect URLs, use the ads_redirect field.	Link should point to the specific product instead of your store’s home page or pages with multiple products. The Product URL domain must match the Store URL domain. Must be a path under your store's destination URL. For aggregators, this must be a direct link to the seller's product page. Aggregators are third party sites that consolidate items to Bing on behalf of individual merchants. In the catalog that an aggregator submits, the link attribute must be a direct link to the seller's product page and the seller-name attribute is required. Adding items submitted on behalf of the merchant must comply with our policies and Terms of Service. Uploading an item for the first time will be pending review until the product URL has been successfully reviewed. Updating the product URL of an existing item will be reverted to the pending review status until it has been successfully reviewed again. The review process can take up to 3 business days.
image_link	URL of an image of the item Example: http://www.contoso.com/ images/ISI1.jpg Requirements: Alphanumeric 1000 character limit Link must be HTTP or HTTPs only. Image must be: bmp, gif, exif, jpg, png, tiff and the recommended minimum size is 220px by 220px. The image size cannot exceed 3.9 MB. No watermarks or free shipping text. Only one image per item.	Do not include any text within your images, including promotional messaging. Use images with a white background for a “pop” effect. Update robots.txt file to allow Microsoft Advertising to crawl your site. Your ad cannot be served if the crawling is incomplete. Learn more. The image link URL is case-sensitive. Changing the casing on the URL will cause the URL to be re-crawled. Uploading an item for the first time will be pending review until the image URL has been successfully crawled. Updating the image URL of an existing item will be reverted to the pending review status until it has been successfully re-crawled. The review process can take up to 3 business days.

Step 2: Link to your partner's Microsoft Merchant Center store expando image

Once you have your product feed, you'll need access to your retail partner's Microsoft Merchant Center store. Once you have access, keep in mind that you won't be able to see all of the products in your partner's store. You'll only see the products that are a direct match of the items in your product feed.

To send a request as a manufacturer:

In the left pane, click Shared Library.
Click Business data, and then click Product feeds.
Click the Linked Stores tab, and then click Link to store.
Enter the Store ID, the Microsoft Merchant Center store identifier that you'll need to obtain from your partner, plus any helpful notes or reminders for your partner in the Notes section.
Click Send request once you're done.

To approve a request as a retailer:

On the top menu, click Tools and then click Microsoft Merchant Center.
Select the Microsoft Merchant Center store you want to edit.
Click Settings, and then click Linked stores.
You'll see a grid that contains the Customer ID, Customer name, and Product your partner associated to your store, plus Actions you can take on the request. From the Actions column, you can Accept or Decline a linking request.

To remove a partner's access from your store:

On the top menu, click Tools and then click Microsoft Merchant Center.
Select the Microsoft Merchant Center store you want to edit.
Click Settings, and then click Linked stores.
Find your partner in the grid, and then click Unlink.

Step 3: Create campaigns to highlight your products expando image

Once you've gained access to your partner's store, you'll need to build Microsoft Shopping Campaigns as usual. In addition, you'll be able to filter products for your shopping campaigns using data from your product feeds (such as GTIN and MPN). This additional filter gives you greater flexibility to add specific products in your shopping campaign.

When you create an ad group, you'll need to specify the ad group type: bid value or bid boost. A bid value ad group allows you to bid on products that your merchandising partner doesn't target. A bid boost allows you to amplify your partner's bid.

To set up an ad group for shopping campaigns:

Go to the Campaigns page, click the Ad groups tab, and click Create ad group.
Enter Ad group settings, including Ad group name (up to 256 characters), Ad group type (bid value or bid boost), Language, and Location.
Under Bids & Targets, select either Bid value or Bid boost:
For bid value: Specify the flat amount of your Sponsored Product bid.
For bid boost: Specify in Bid boost the percentage that allows your Sponsored Product bid to flex, as well as the Maximum value of cost per click that you're willing to pay. Your cost per click will be the lower of the two values relative to your partner's bid. (For example, let's say your partner bids $5 USD on a product. If your bid boost set to 20 percent and your maximum value is 50 cents, your share would be 50 cents and not $1 USD.)
Enter information to create your ad.
Select your bid type, products or placements, and enter your products.
Click Save.
After clicking Save, set your bids, targeting, and additional advanced settings.

Using reports to track Sponsored Products

All existing Microsoft Shopping Campaigns reports will work for Sponsored Product campaigns. Use the following reports to track the performance of your Sponsored Product bids.

If you are a retailer, you can see the impact of Sponsored Products in the Product dimensions and Production partition reports. Both reports will contain the following columns: Assisted impressions, Assisted clicks, and if you have conversion tracking enabled, Assisted Conversions. Each column will respectively track impressions, clicks, and conversions on a Sponsored Product campaign.

Product partition
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, average cost-per-click, and average conversion for each product group in your Microsoft Shopping Campaigns.	Why run it: To see the performance data for the product groups in your shopping campaigns and to optimize your campaigns accordingly.
Product partition unit
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, average cost-per-click, and average conversions for each product group in your Microsoft Shopping Campaigns. Depending on the report time and columns you choose, the report may include more than one row per product group.	Why run it: To see product partition unit data of your Product Groups in Shopping Campaigns.
Product dimension
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, average cost-per-click, and conversion for each product in your catalog [each line item in Microsoft Merchant Center catalog].	Why run it: To figure out which of your products are triggering ads and getting the most clicks and optimize the ones not performing so well.
Product search term
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position for search terms that have triggered your ads.	Why run it: To see what your audience is searching for when your ads are shown. You can use this information to make informed additions, removals, or edits to both your keyword and negative keyword lists.
Product match count
What it shows: The number of products that are matched and targeted at the campaign, ad group, and product group level.	Why run it: To see if you covered your bidding across the Microsoft Shopping Campaigns inventory.