Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, a New York web‑service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. He is also the founder of the Search Engine Roundtable and the News Editor of Search Engine Land. You can follow Barry on Twitter @rustybrick or on LinkedIn.

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Microsoft Advertising announced a slew of new features including new customer‑acquisition goals as an open beta, Share of Voice (SOV) metrics, asset‑group‑level URL options and tracking templates, an increased Search Theme limit, enhanced asset‑group import, Content Targeting now generally available, location‑targeting improvements and autogenerated assets in Responsive Search ads.

What was announced (quick bulleted list):

• New customer‑acquisition goals – now an open beta for advertisers using purchase goals.

• Share of Voice (SOV) metrics – includes impression share, click share, impression share lost to budget, and impression share lost to rank.

• Asset‑group‑level URL options and tracking templates – within Performance Max (PMax) asset groups, advertisers can now submit tracking parameters and custom parameters to split up data at the asset‑group level.

• Increased Search Theme limit – PMax campaigns now allow up to 50 search themes, doubling the previous limit.

• Enhanced Asset Group Import – if an asset group contains images that don’t meet size requirements, exceed the previous 25‑image limit, or include auto‑generated logos, the rest of the asset group will still be imported.

• Content Targeting now generally available – two options: Placement targeting and Topic targeting.

• Location‑targeting improvements – expanded and improved location targeting across Microsoft Advertising to make setup smoother and more accurate.

• Autogenerated assets in Responsive Search ads – rolling out autogenerated assets as an automatically enabled feature when you create new Responsive Search ads (RSA) for users globally, excluding China and South Korea.

Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison, posted a recap of this news on LinkedIn.

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