Microsoft Advertising announces Unified Smart: A single management solution for multi-channel paid advertising and social media

In an effort to make paid search and social media advertising accessible to businesses of all sizes, Microsoft Advertising announced the pilot program for a single streamlined place to manage all of a business’s advertising campaigns. Interested parties can complete the online questionnaire^[1] to get early access.

For businesses just starting out with advertising, paid search marketers can enter the business URL and their advertising goals, and Microsoft will automatically create a campaign based on the website content. Before the campaign goes live, advertisers can review key elements like when ads are shown, suggested keywords, suggested budgets, and more.

Text ads are automatically created but can be edited by the advertiser at any time. The ads will show up on Microsoft’s Search Network, but advertisers can also choose to display their ads on Google, as well.

Manage social media ads in the same platform. Along with search ads, the single point of management also allows advertisers to create image and video ads for Facebook and Instagram. Microsoft Advertising includes image suggestions from their partnership with Shutterstock.

Reporting in a single place. Along with being able to manage multiple, cross-channel campaigns in a single platform, small business advertisers can also see their reporting for these search and social media advertising campaigns in one place.

Consolidated inbox and post scheduling for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Businesses can also manage their organic social engagement in the same place with a consolidated inbox through Microsoft. Businesses can also manage and schedule social media posts for the above platforms through the same management tool.

Organic social media reporting. Along with paid search and social media advertising reports, businesses can also see their social media insights including engagement such as likes, comments, shares, retweets, and more.

Why we care. This solution will make it much simpler for small business marketers to begin advertising if they haven’t already and to manage their campaigns in a single place. Monitoring campaigns and making adjustments won’t require SMBs to log in to multiple platforms and eliminates the need for a third-party reporting software, too.

We do encourage small business advertisers to watch and tweak their campaigns carefully, though. Microsoft Advertising uses AI technology to automatically manage keyword, bids, and budgets. So if you’re not careful or comfortable with AI, these tools can sometimes make recommendations that don’t fit your business exactly.

If this sounds like a good fit for your small business, apply for the pilot program^[2].

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