Microsoft Advertising, an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft, has been on a transformative journey over the past few years, consolidating various assets into what it terms an omnichannel, multi-format ecosystem in advertising.

It launched Copilot on February 7, 2023, which is based on a large language model. It is the company's primary replacement for the discontinued Cortana.

Nick Seckold, regional vice president, APAC, Microsoft Advertising, shares that the company helps advertisers scale their businesses across its network and access billions of users who are using Microsoft products every day.

In the advertising industry, AI is not a new term. To further assist advertisers, publishers, and consumers in staying relevant and increasing productivity, Microsoft Advertising is deploying Gen AI through Copilot on Bing.

Seckold explains that the company has also released the Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising Platform, where buyers go in to set up and optimise campaigns, build creative, and all things of that sort.

“One can prompt the AI and say – set me up a campaign targeting this audience group, etc  - and the Copilot will come back to you with a baseline. Currently, Copilot in Bing is available in 160 markets, including India,” he states.

A question that arises is whether the campaign created on Copilot will be attributed to advertisers or Microsoft. Seckold asserts that it is the advertisers' campaign, not the company's.

“We provide the technology that allows marketers and advertisers to build their campaigns. We don't own the keywords and the creative that they build and put in there. All we're doing is facilitating the creation and the automation through technology deployment,” he adds.

Challenges

Despite the widespread adoption of AI, brands and advertisers still face a few challenges. Seckold believes that one of the hardest things about using Gen AI is to break old habits.

He exemplifies it by saying, “If you've been using Excel and been used to using it and if things are not broken, you're probably more reluctant to change and try new things. Therefore, adopting technology to make things more efficient takes time because you have to re-learn.”

Another challenge that sounds simple but is not - is how to give the best prompts. Seckold says that it sounds simple as one just asks Copilot a question but translating what they want to do from their mind to typing is not easy.

“We have built an internal prompt engineering library that will suggest some of the prompts that users could typically use to get the best from the AI and that is a bit of a skill. Technically, Copilot is working beautifully, and most people that I speak to have come up only with positive feedback and experience,” he shares.

With the advent of AI, data privacy has become a significant concern. Speaking on the matter, Seckold says that Microsoft Advertising addresses queries regarding authenticity, visuals, and watermarks. When one uses Copilot and enters a query into the chat, it will return a list of results, unlike those seen in a typical search experience.

“Copilot will give you a combination of some organic results in terms of reference points. There will be clear citations in those reference points about who is providing that information,” he says.

Copilot’s impact on digital ad market

The digital advertising market is getting more competitive each day as there are several options available for advertisers. Seckold notes that adding Copilot across its ecosystem will help advertisers and brands get what they want faster and more efficiently.

He claims that the company is a few years ahead of some of its competitors out there who are working hard to catch up. “Based on the investments that we've been making over the last number of years, I believe it puts us in a really strong position to be a leader in the space,” he says.

Seckold also highlights that anecdotally, Microsoft Advertising has seen its conversion rates increase. The relevance and overall experience of Bing Copilot are making “the ad experience more engaging overall – we are seeing strong engagement with ads being shown on Copilot compared to standard search ads. And when we look at lower funnel ads specifically, it’s very effective.”

Global AdTech and MarTech trends for India

As the digital advertising and marketing landscape evolves rapidly worldwide, industry leaders are constantly seeking innovative approaches to stay ahead of the curve.

Seckold believes that as global trends shape the digital advertising and marketing landscape, one practice he would strongly advocate for the Indian AdTech and MarTech fraternity is the adoption of Gen AI, and it is not just about automation; it’s about transformation.

He says, “Generative AI has the remarkable ability to enhance creativity, making advertisers and marketers more efficient and elevating performance to new heights. It serves as a critical companion, enabling the creation of content at scale, generating richer insights, and delivering a more personalised experience for consumers. So, for marketers looking to stay ahead of the curve, embracing generative AI is a trend that offers a wealth of possibilities to reshape our industry.”