Coming this June we’ll be releasing some exciting features that users have long been asking for. These features will help improve Radius Targeting and Site Links; all with the goal of closing the gap with AdWords. As a result, this may impact some of our API customers and we’ve highlighted some of the changes here so you can be prepared ahead of our launch. These features will all be released in V9 as V8 has been marked for deprecation.
Improvements to Radius Targeting
Our goal is bring greater parity in the targeting functionality between Bing Ads and AdWords, and more importantly give you more control over where your ads show.
- Geo & radius targets in the same campaign/ad group:
Bing Ads currently limits you to only add one type of location target - either all geo (city, state, country) or all radius (5 miles around Seattle, WA). We are changing this. Soon you will be able to add both geo as well as radius location targets in the same campaign or ad group.
- More granular radius targeting:
We will also support more granular radius targeting from 1 to 500 mi in increments of 1 mi. Besides, you will also be able to choose kilometers or miles as units for your radius targets.
Improvements to Site Links
We’re taking one step further to close the gap between to Site Links in Bing Ads and AdWords. The most noticeable change is that you’ll be able to include description text with every link
- Description Text:
Just like in AdWords, you’ll be able to add two additional lines of text with each site link in your ad extension.
- Device Preference:
We will also be supporting mobile device preference so that you can indicate which links you prefer to show on mobile.
What you need to know
- Please inspect your code to ensure that there would be no conflict if both the radius and geo target was set by a customer. That model isn’t allowed today, but at launch your customers may begin to use this feature.
- Previously we only allowed predefined increments (5, 10, 20, etc.) as the radius on a radius target. Please ensure your clients can handle radius in any odd increments (1, 2, 13, etc.) moving forward. You will need to update their client UI and platforms appropriately ahead of our launch.
- API customers should refresh their proxy off of the latest V9 WSDL. This will include two new string fields in the Site Link entity (Description1 and Description2). Until we launch, these fields will be available in the WSDL as stubs but they cannot be specified nor will they be returned.
Starting today, API customers will have 90 days to ensure that the above changes do not impact their clients. Check back in June as we’ll be announcing on our blog when these features are available to all users.
If you have any questions or comment, feel free to leave them in the comments below, post a thread in our forums, ping us on Twitter or write on our Facebook wall.