Universal campaigns bringing ads to more services

Feb 1, 2017 08:30 GMT  ·  By

​As if ads that showed up in the Start menu or on the desktop weren’t enough, Microsoft is now empowering developers to reach a bigger audience with their ads using a new concept called universal campaigns.

Specifically, what these universal campaigns do is allow developers to create ads for their apps that would then be published across a series of Microsoft services, including MSN.com, Outlook.com, and even Skype. Furthermore, Microsoft says that third-party app ads can show up in Microsoft Solitaire Collection, the company’s modern interpretation of the classic Solitaire game.

There are three reasons to use these new universal campaigns and they should convince developers to embrace them for their existing or new apps.

Why should you choose universal campaigns?

First and foremost, it’s the obvious wider audience that can see these ads. By bringing them to MSN, Outlook, Skype, and Solitaire, Microsoft makes it possible for millions of users to check out the ads.

Then, it’s what the company calls “a wide variety of touch points.” The firm explains: “MSN is primarily used in the context of news and entertainment, while Skype is used for personal communication and Outlook is used for email. Many Windows customers spend a fair amount of time playing popular games like Microsoft Solitaire. Your ad can now capture the attention of users in all these different situations, as well as improve recall and conversion rates.”

And last but not least, the company’s machine-learning algorithms can help target the audience you are searching for, and given the fact that ads are available on multiple services, it makes it easier to find the get user profiles more efficiently.

Universal campaigns are already available, and Microsoft says that all campaigns that use auto-targeting will automatically have this new concept enabled. Other than that, developers setting new targeted campaigns need to choose Universal when choosing the Surface in the Audience section.