Send data to Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising is a pay-per-click advertising platform that displays ads based on keywords in a user’s search query.

Use Customer List Record - Bulk API to push customer data to the Microsoft Advertising partner syndication network, which enables multichannel advertising to global audiencess across display, mobile, video, and native channels. This network includes:

  • Bing (and sites owned and operated by Bing, such as Bing Maps, MSN.com, Bing.de and Bing.co.uk)

  • Microsoft Audience Network

  • Microsoft News

  • Microsoft Edge

  • Outlook.com

  • Microsoft Start

  • Access to external partners, such as Yahoo.com (and sites owned and operated by Yahoo), DuckDuckGo, AOL.com (and sites owned and operated by AOL), Xandr, and Nine.

Note

This destination uses the Bing Ads API .

Changes to audiences are not immediately available in Microsoft Advertising. Allow for up to 24 hours after the point at which Amperity has finished sending audience updates for them to be available.

This topic describes the steps that are required to send customer data to Microsoft Advertising from Amperity:

  1. Get details

  2. Authorize Amperity access to the customer’s account

  3. Add destination

  4. Add data template

Get details

Microsoft Advertising requires the following configuration details:

Detail one.

The Microsoft Advertising customer and account IDs.

Tip

To get your customer and account IDs, sign into the Microsoft Advertising web application, and then click on the Campaigns page. The URL for the Campaigns page will contain two key-value pairs, one for the customer ID and the other for the account ID.

The URL is similar to:

https://ui.ads.microsoft.com/campaign
/Campaigns.m?cid=12345678&aid=9876543
21#/customer/...

The customer ID is the number in the URL that follows the cid parameter. For example: “12345678”.

The account ID is the number in the URL that follows the aid parameter. For example: “987654321”.

Detail one.

The name of the list to be managed in Microsoft Advertising.

Detail one.

Authorize Amperity to send data to the customer’s Microsoft Ads account.

Configure OAuth

OAuth is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used to grant websites or applications access to information on other websites.

Use OAuth to configure Amperity to send customer data to Microsoft Advertising.

To configure OAuth

Step 1.

Open the Destinations tab and click Add Destination. The Add Destination dialog box opens.

Select Microsoft Advertising from the Plugin drop-down, and then from the Credential drop-down, select Create a new credential.

This opens the Create New Credential dialog box.

Step 2.

In the Create New Credential dialog box, click “Generate authorization URL”.

Copy the URL, and then provide the URL to a user who has credentials that allow access to Microsoft Advertising. The user must log in and complete the steps required by the OAuth process for Microsoft Advertising.

After this is completed, you will be redirected to the Credentials page in Amperity.

Verify the credential is on the page, and then return to the Destinations tab.

Step 3.

Open the Destinations tab and click Add Destination. The Add Destination dialog box opens.

Select Microsoft Advertising from the Plugin drop-down, and then from the Credential drop-down, select the credential that is authorized to access Microsoft Advertising.

Note

The value for the Refresh Token setting is updated automatically after you select the credential.

Reauthorize Amperity

You may need to reauthorize access to Microsoft Advertising. This is necessary when an authorization token has expired or when it has been removed by someone with permission to manage access within Microsoft Advertising. To reauthorize access to Microsoft Advertising, follow the steps to configure OAuth and create a new credential.

Add destination

Configure Amperity to send customer data directly to Microsoft Advertising.

Warning

Amperity must be authorized to send data to your Microsoft Advertising account prior to configuring the destination.

To add a destination

Step 1.

Open the Destinations tab to configure a destination for Microsoft Advertising. Click the Add Destination button to open the Destination dialog box.

Name, description, choose plugin.

Enter a name for the destination and provide a description. For example: “Microsoft Advertising” and “This sends customer data to Microsoft Advertising”.

From the Plugin drop-down, start typing “micro” to filter the list, and then select Microsoft Advertising.

Step 2.

Credentials allow Amperity to connect to Microsoft Advertising.

The credential type is set automatically. You may use an existing credential or you may add a new one.

Choose an existing credential or add credential.

Select an existing credential from the Credential drop-down.

– or –

Select Create a new credential from the Credential drop-down. This opens the Credential dialog box.

Choose an existing credential or add credential.

Enter the name for the credential, and then add a description.

Steps to configure OAuth

  1. Generate an authorization link, and then visit the URL that was generated to complete the authorization process.

  2. Log in to Microsoft Advertising at the generated URL using credentials that allow access to your instance of Microsoft Advertising.

    Note

    Send the URL to an individual who can provide these credentials, and then ask them to log into Microsoft Advertising on your behalf.

  3. When complete, you will be redirected to the Credentials page in Amperity.

  4. Verify the credential is on the page, and then return to the Destinations tab. From the Plugin drop-down, select the Microsoft Advertising, and then use the credential that was just created.

    Note

    The value for the Refresh Token setting will be updated automatically after you select the credential.

Step 3.

Each destination has settings that define how Amperity will deliver data to Microsoft Advertising. These settings are listed under the Settings section of the Destination dialog box.

Settings for Microsoft Ads.

The following settings are specific to Microsoft Advertising:

Setting

Description

Account ID

Your account ID for Microsoft Advertising.

Customer ID

Your customer ID within Microsoft Advertising.

Tip

To get your customer and account IDs, sign into the Microsoft Advertising web application, and then click on the Campaigns page. The URL for the Campaigns page will contain two key-value pairs, one for the customer ID and the other for the account ID.

The URL is similar to:

https://ui.ads.microsoft.com/campaign
/Campaigns.m?cid=12345678&aid=9876543
21#/customer/...

The customer ID is the number in the URL that follows the cid parameter. For example: “12345678”.

The account ID is the number in the URL that follows the aid parameter. For example: “987654321”.

Step 4.

Business users are assigned to the Amp360 User and/or AmpIQ User policies. (Amp360 User allows access to queries and orchestrations and AmpIQ User allows access to segments and campaigns.) A business user cannot select a destination that is not visible to them.

Business users – including users assigned to the DataGrid Operator policy – may have restricted access to PII.

What is restricted access to PII?

Restricted PII access is enabled when the Restrict PII access policy option that prevents users who are assigned to that option from viewing data that is marked as PII anywhere in Amperity and from sending that data to any downstream workflow.

You can make this destination visible to orchestrations and allow users with restricted access to PII to use this destination by enabling one (or both) of the following options:

Allow business users access to this destination.

Note

To allow business users to use this destination with campaigns, you must enable the Available to campaigns option within the data template. This allows users to send campaign results from Amperity to Microsoft Advertising.

The other two settings may be configured within the data template instead of the destination.

Step 5.

Review all settings, and then click Save.

Save the destination.

Important

You must configure a data template for this destination before you can send data to Microsoft Advertising.

Add data template

A data template defines how columns in Amperity data structures are sent to downstream workflows. A data template is part of the configuration for sending query and segment results from Amperity to an external location.

About paid media campaigns

Amperity provides the right set of data to support your brand’s paid media advertising with Microsoft Advertising.

  1. Merged Customers vs. Unified Paid Media

    The Merged Customers table contains each of your customers’ best profiles.

    The Unified Paid Media table contains all your customer’s known profile data.

    Your brand will require additional data templates to use the Unified Paid Media table alongside the Merged Customers table to support paid media campaigns.

  2. Enable dedicated data templates for each table.

    Use a consistent naming pattern to label data templates that use data from the Merged Customers table. For example: “Best profile”.

    Use a consistent naming pattern to label data templates that use data from the Unified Paid Media table. For example: “Full profile”.

  3. After data templates are configured for both tables, use the default attributes component on the Campaigns page to configure which attributes will be associated with the destination, including the table from which those attributes will be pulled.

    The selected table will affect your brand’s downstream match rates and overall customer matches within your paid media campaigns. The decision behind which table to use depends on your brand’s downstream use case and the type and amount of customer profile data your brand wants to use to match customers.

    You brand should expect to see higher match rates when sending audiences from the Merged Customers table, but a higher number of matched customer profiles when sending audiences from the Unified Paid Media table. Use A/B testing to compare the results from each table, after which your brand can use the audience that works best for your campaigns.

To add a data template

Step 1.

From the Destinations tab, open the menu for a destination that is configured for Microsoft Advertising, and then select Add data template.

This opens the Add Data Template dialog box.

Step 1

Enter the name of the data template and a description. For example: “Microsoft Advertising” and “Send customer data to Microsoft Advertising.”.

Step 2.

Verify business user access to queries and orchestrations and access to segments and campaigns.

A business user may also have restricted access to PII, which prevents them from viewing and sending customer profile data.

Step 2.

If business user access was not configured as part of the destination, you may configure access from the data template.

Important

To allow business users to use this destination with campaigns, you must enable the Available to campaigns option. This allows users to send campaign results from Amperity to Microsoft Advertising.

If you enable this option, the data extension settings require using campaign name and group name template variables to associate the name of the data extension to your campaign.

Step 3.

Verify all configuration settings.

Verify settings for the data template.

Note

When the customer ID and account ID settings were are not configured as part of the destination, you must configure them as part of the data template before making this destination available to campaigns.

Step 4.

Review all settings, and then click Save.

Save the data template.

After you have saved the data template, and depending on how you configured it, business users can send query results and/or send campaigns to Microsoft Advertising.

Workflow actions

A workflow will occasionally show an error that describes what prevented a workflow from completing successfully. These first appear as alerts in the notifications pane. The alert describes the error, and then links to the Workflows tab.

Open the Workflows page to review a list of workflow actions, choose an action to resolve the workflow error, and then follow the steps that are shown.

Step one.

You may receive a notifications error for a configured Microsoft Advertising destination. This appears as an alert in the notifications pane on the Destinations tab.

Review a notifications error.

If you receive a notification error, review the details, and then click the View Workflow link to open this notification error in the Workflows page.

Step two.

On the Workflows page, review the individual steps to determine which step(s) have errors that require your attention, and then click Show Resolutions to review the list of workflow actions that were generated for this error.

The workflow tab, showing a workflow with errors.
Step three.

A list of individual workflow actions are shown. Review the list to identify which action you should take.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

Some workflow actions are common across workflows and will often be available, such as retrying a specific task within a workflow or restarting a workflow. These types of actions can often resolve an error.

In certain cases, actions are specific and are shown when certain conditions exist in your tenant. These types of actions typically must be resolved and may require steps that must be done upstream or downstream from your Amperity workflow.

Amperity provides a series of workflow actions that can help resolve specific issues that may arise with Microsoft Advertising, including:

Step four.

Select a workflow action from the list of actions, and then review the steps for resolving that error.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

After you have completed the steps in the workflow action, click Continue to rerun the workflow.

Email address required

Microsoft Advertising requires an email address to be present in the data that is sent from Amperity. The email address must be in a field named “Email”.

For campaigns

To resolve this error, verify that “Email” is included in the list of attributes that are being sent to Microsoft Advertising.

  1. Open the Campaigns page, and then open the segment used with this workflow.

  2. Verify that “Email” is included in the list of attributes for each treatment group that sends audiences to Microsoft Advertising. Update the list of attributes for each treatment group if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

For orchestrations

To resolve this error, verify that the “Email” column is included in the query results.

  1. Open the Queries page, and then open the query used with this workflow.

  2. Verify that “Email” is included in the query results. Update the query if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Expired credentials

The credentials for your Microsoft Advertising account may have expired. This may require creating a new credential for this destination.

Invalid credentials

The credentials that are defined in Amperity are invalid.

To resolve this error, verify that the credentials required by this workflow are valid.

  1. Open the Credentials page.

  2. Review the details for the credentials used with this workflow. Update the credentials for Microsoft Advertising if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Must accept terms and conditions

You must accept the Customer Match Terms of Use before you can use the Customer List Record - Bulk API . You must select the I accept option from within the Microsoft Advertising web application.

To resolve this error, you must agree to the Customer Match Terms of Use .

  1. Log in to the Microsoft Advertising web application, and then agree to the Customer Match Terms of Use .

  2. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Not authorized

Amperity must have access to the correct combination of account and customer IDs in Microsoft Advertising.

To resolve this error, verify the account and customer IDs in Microsoft Advertising, and then update the destination associated with this workflow for the correct values.

  1. Open the Destinations page, and then open the destination that is used with this workflow. Review the Account ID and Customer ID fields that are configured in Amperity.

  2. Log in to the Microsoft Advertising web application, and then find the account and customer IDs that are associated with your user account.

  3. Compare the Account ID and Customer ID fields configured in Amperity to the account and customer IDs that exist in Microsoft Advertising. Update the configuration for this destination in Amperity as required.

    Note

    This may require creating a new credential for this destination.

  4. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Two-step authentication required

Microsoft Advertising requires two-step verification to be enabled before Amperity can send data.

Note

In some cases, this workflow error is caused by a sign-in risk, which represents the possibility that a given authentication request wasn’t made by the identity owner. For example: a login attempt from a device that is not trusted.

To resolve this error, ensure that multi-factor authentication is enabled for your Microsoft Advertising account.

  1. Log in to the Microsoft Advertising web application.

  2. Verify that two-step verification is enabled for your Microsoft Advertising account.

    Note

    This may require creating a new credential for this destination.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.