About shopping campaigns for brands

Use shopping campaigns for brands to drive sales with retail partners.
Note

This feature is currently available in an open beta for the US and UK.

By partnering with retailers that sell your products, shopping campaigns for Brands helps you reach and influence potential customers across the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network. Shopping campaigns for brands allows you to:

  • Boost your product sales across all retailers with a single campaign.
  • Increase your product visibility on digital shelves.
  • Get insights into your brand, audience, and product performance across the Microsoft Search and Audience network.

Benefits of using Shopping campaigns for brands

  • Get started right away: As a brand, you just need to provide your brands' names. Retailers who sell your products are automatically identified and invited to partner with you.
  • Drive sales across retailers seamlessly: A single campaign can target all your retailer partners—- there's no need to create individual campaigns for each retailer.
  • Product-level insights for each retailer: You can view and analyze product-level reporting on conversions and revenues, broken down by each retailer. Note: This requires a given retailer to share product-level conversion data.

Onboarding for brands

To get started as a brand, see the following steps:

Step 1: Enter your brandsexpando image
  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Shopping for brands.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, select Tools > Shopping for brands.

  2. Select Brands > Add brand.
  3. Enter all your brands and their websites. A website URL should look like: http://contoso.com with no slashes ( / ). You can also add the sub-brands (optional) to help us identify all of your products.
  4. Select Save.
Step 2: View matched retailers and productsexpando image

After you enter your brands, retailers who sell your products can be automatically identified and linked (which is what we recommend) or you can manage retailer link requests individually. The Overview page provides information about your linked retailers and matched products.

  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Shopping for brands.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, select Tools > Shopping for brands.

  2. Select Retail partners.
  3. Select Add retail partner or switch the Link to all retail partners toggle on (recommended) to allow Microsoft to automatically match you with retailers who sell your products.
  4. If you are manually linking a retailer's store, enter the Retailer store ID. This is the Microsoft Merchant Center store identifier that you'll need to obtain from your partner.
  5. Select Send request.

How are my brands matched to retailers?

Brands are matched to retailers via the Microsoft Brand Product Graph that:

  • Identifies your products available at different retailers based on attributes such as GTIN and MPN.
  • Catalogs brands and their aliases, then establishes product-brand relationships.
Step 3: Create a campaignexpando image

With shopping campaigns for brands, you only need to create a single campaign that reaches across all shopping platforms (search, e-commerce, and physical stores).

To get started, navigate to Campaigns > Create campaign > Boost product sales. Follow the wizard's steps and when it’s time to choose a Retailer, select Add retail partner.

Onboarding for retailers

Retailers must approve linking requests from brands to their Microsoft Merchant Center store. Once a brand-to-retailer link is established, brands and retailers are then able to cooperatively bid on shared products.

Step 1: Create a product feedexpando image

Simply put, a product feed is a list of items you're promoting with a third party. 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:

  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Merchant Center.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, select Tools > Merchant Center.

  2. Choose the store you want to add the feed to, then select Create feed.
  3. Enter the feed details and select the Input Method to submit your feed file.
  4. Select Create feed to create the product feed.
Here are the required and optional fields you can include in the product feed file.
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 retailer 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

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 The title of the item.

Example:
Women's shoes

Requirements:
Alphanumeric

150 character limit.

Don't enclose in quotes.

  • Use relevant titles that match 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 such as color to differentiate from other products.
  • Do not 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) within 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 The item's description.

Example:
Bright yellow 100% cotton dress shirt

Requirements:
Alphanumeric

10000 character limit.

No HTML code. 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 in the beginning.
  • 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.

  • The 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: Approve retail partner requestexpando image

We recommend that you enable automatic approval for store linking requests. This ensures that when any new brands who sell your products onboard, they're automatically linked to your Microsoft Merchant Center account. Without automatic linking, you'll need to check for and approve requests manually.

To automatically approved retail partner requests:

  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Merchant Center.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, select Tools > Merchant Center.

  2. Select the Microsoft Merchant Center store.
  3. Select Settings > Linked manager accounts.
  4. Switch the Auto-approve link requests toggle on.

To approve a retail partner request:

  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Merchant Center.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, select Tools > Merchant Center.

  2. Select the Microsoft Merchant Center store you want to edit.
  3. Select Settings > Retail partners.
  4. 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:

  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Merchant Center.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, select Tools > Merchant Center.

  2. Select the Microsoft Merchant Center store you want to edit.
  3. Select Settings, and then select Retail partners.
  4. Find your partner in the grid, and then select Unlink.

Keep an eye on your campaign

You can view your campaigns' performances on the All Campaigns page. All existing Microsoft shopping campaigns reports support Shopping campaigns for brands.

If you are a retailer, you can see the impact of Shopping Campaigns for Brands in the Product dimensions and Production partition reports. Both reports contain Assisted impressions, Assisted clicks, and if you have conversion tracking enabled, Assisted Conversions. Respectively, these metrics track impressions, clicks, and conversions on Shopping campaigns for brands.

Product partition
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, average cost per click (CPC), 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 (CPC), 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 the product partition unit data of your Product groups in Shopping campaigns.
Product dimension
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, spend, average cost per click (CPC), and conversion for each product in your catalog [each line item in Microsoft Merchant Center catalog]. Why run it: To determine which of your products are triggering ads and getting the most clicks and optimize those that are not performing so well.
Product search term
What it shows: The impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), 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.

See more videos...