Microsoft Advertising today said it has started an overhaul of the interface advertisers use to run their campaigns, acknowledging in its November product newsletter that some customers had been stuck on blank pages, redirects and repeated sign-in attempts, that its reporting did not always make insights easy to find, compare or export, and that some recommendations "seemed too generic."

The newsletter, published on LinkedIn under the Microsoft Advertising company page and dated November 9, 2026, carries no named author, although parts of it are written in the first person. It has 10,859 subscribers, according to its LinkedIn page. Alongside the interface changes, the edition revisits several features that Microsoft announced on October 28: messaging guidelines for AI-written ads, AI-assisted campaign creation, the Conversions API, and a set of Performance Max controls. In several cases the November wording differs from what Microsoft said less than two weeks earlier. Device targeting, which Microsoft said in October would roll out to all advertisers within weeks, is now described as "in pilot."

In Short

Microsoft is rebuilding the screens advertisers use to manage campaigns on Bing, Copilot and its other properties, with new menus, filters, bidding reports and fixes for sign-in problems, after users said the old version was hard to work with. It matters to anyone who spends money on Microsoft's search and Performance Max ads, because the update adds ways to check whether automated bidding is hitting the targets set for it and sets out limits on how far its AI follows written instructions. Several of the features are still pilots without dates, so what changes in a given account today depends on what Microsoft has switched on for it.

What Microsoft says was wrong

The newsletter is direct about the problems it sets out to fix. "We heard you and have taken onboard your feedback on how Microsoft Advertising's UI and Editor can be better," it states. The admissions are specific. "We heard that the previous reporting experience did not always make insights easy to find, compare, or export," one passage reads. Another: "We heard that some customers were getting stuck on blank pages, redirects, or repeated sign-in attempts." On recommendations, Microsoft writes: "We also heard your feedback that some recommendations seemed too generic."

How much of the redesign is live is less clear. "Based on your feedback, we've made some massive improvements to the Microsoft Advertising management platform, with more on the way," the newsletter says. Some items are written in the past tense, others in the present continuous - "We're adding," "We're improving," "We're making it easier." No dates are attached to any of them, and the newsletter does not say whether all accounts, or all markets, already see the new screens. It ends the section by calling this "only the beginning of our UI and UX overhaul."

This is not the platform's first redesign. In September 2020, PPC Land reported that Microsoft Advertising rolled out a new interface to all advertisers, with a reorganised left-hand navigation, keyboard shortcuts and a Manager Account dashboard.

The changes are grouped into three areas. The first is about finding things. Microsoft says it has "reorganized the navigation menu around the tasks you perform and made more functionality available by default." New breadcrumbs show where a user sits in the account and campaign hierarchy, and navigation search and customisable menus are meant to shorten the route to frequently used workflows.

A screenshot in the newsletter shows what that looks like. The left-hand menu groups pages under Optimize (Overview, Recommendations, Search insights, Experiments, Asset performance, Competition, Landing pages), Target (Keywords, Locations, Audiences, Demographics, Ad schedule, Devices, Dynamic ad targets) and Manage (Change history, Settings). The Overview page opens with a panel headed "2 issues need attention," flagging an inactive conversion goal marked "Automation degraded" and three disapproved ads, next to an estimate of conversions per day at risk. The figures in the image - 2,345 clicks, $1,840 in spend, a banner reading "Acquired +15% new customers" - are sample values in a product mockup, not results Microsoft reports.

Reporting has been rebuilt as well. The refreshed experience, according to Microsoft, "modernizes reporting tables, page headers, filters, date-range comparisons, column customization, and exports."

Filters, search terms and bidding

The second area is diagnosis. Active filters and segments are now easier to see, filters accept OR logic, and saved views and column preferences carry over as users move between pages. A second screenshot shows a "Create a new column" dialog in which a custom metric - average order value, defined as revenue divided by conversions - is built from a formula of existing performance and conversion metrics.

Search term reporting gets clearer source labels, performance fields, drill-downs and the ability to add negative keywords from the report. The same treatment applies to dynamic targets, and Microsoft points to "improved reporting options for AI Max with the Search term landing page report."

The bidding changes are the most consequential for budget holders. "New bidding views make it easier to compare actual performance with the targets you set," the newsletter says. They include centralised Bid Strategy Reports, average target CPA and ROAS metrics, target-versus-actual comparisons, target trend lines and "conversion-delay context" - an acknowledgement that conversions reported days after a click can make recent performance look worse against a target than it is.

These views matter more on Microsoft than they once did. In July 2025, Microsoft folded Target CPA and Target ROAS into Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value as optional goals for new campaigns from August 4, 2025. On October 1, 2026, it removed Max CPC from new non-portfolio campaigns. With bid caps gone and targets set inside automated strategies, a report that sets the target against the outcome is one of the few direct checks advertisers have on whether the system is delivering what it was asked to.

Sign-in, users and recommendations

The third area deals with account access. Microsoft says it is adding "clearer browser troubleshooting guidance, plain-language error messages, more specific recovery steps, and more persistent sign-in behavior." A screenshot of the sign-in page shows three options: sign in with Microsoft, with Google or with Facebook.

User management is also changing. Invitation pages will show which account access is required, when an invitation expires and what to do next, and administrators get better visibility into pending and expired invitations. Roles and permissions, and who can grant access, are meant to be easier to understand.

On recommendations, the commitment is narrower. "We're continuing to improve when recommendations appear and the account-specific context explaining why a change is being suggested," according to the newsletter. It does not say whether the auto-apply settings for recommendations change.

What changed since October 28

Much of the rest of the newsletter covers ground from Microsoft's October roundup, which PPC Land reported under the headline Microsoft lets advertisers set up to 40 guidelines for AI-written ads. Set side by side, the two texts differ in several places:

  • Device targeting for Performance Max was set to roll out to all advertisers in the coming weeks, according to the October 28 post. The November newsletter says: "Device targeting is in pilot."
  • Age and gender: October described age and gender targeting as generally available, allowing advertisers to include or exclude groups. November says "Age and gender exclusions are now generally available" and describes only exclusion.
  • Brand exclusions: in October Microsoft said it was still refining them so they could apply to text ads only. They are now "in pilot," so that brand exclusions can block text ads while "still allowing product ads to appear for those brand searches."
  • Audience exclusions remain in pilot. November names the audiences covered: Customer Match and remarketing lists.
  • Search term landing page reporting was due to start rolling out in mid-November. The newsletter refers to it as an existing report but does not give a date or say whether it has reached all accounts.
  • AI-powered campaign creation had no stated markets in October. It is now "available to new advertisers signing up for Microsoft Advertising in English-speaking markets, including the US, Canada, UK, and Australia."

Does the shift from a rollout within weeks to a pilot for device targeting mean a delay, or only more precise wording? The newsletter does not say. None of the pilots has an end date, and this edition does not say how to join them. The October post directed advertisers to their account team or Support.

Messaging guidelines: a brief, not a hard rule

Messaging guidelines let advertisers tell Microsoft's AI what generated ad copy should and should not say in Performance Max campaigns and Search campaigns with AI Max enabled. The newsletter repeats the limit of 40 inputs "on how Copilot should think about your brand and what instructions it must follow in adapting creative." It describes the feature as "in open beta" in one paragraph and as "available in open pilot" a few paragraphs later.

The more important detail is a caveat that did not appear in October. "Text customization is grounded in your existing assets (including landing pages)," the newsletter says. "If you include a message guideline that runs counter to your own landing page creative or existing text assets, there's a strong likelihood that the message guideline won't be respected as a hard rule." Microsoft's example: an advertiser who instructs that headlines be sentence-cased but has written its own headlines in title case "might see some title cased headlines in the AI optimized assets."

In other words, the guideline competes with the advertiser's own material, and the material can win. The newsletter compares the guidelines to "giving briefs to a team member: the clearer the guidelines, the easier time the team member will have following them."

Microsoft also discourages brand shorthand. Advertisers who use internal colloquialisms are told to "spell out exactly what the thing means in plain language." The company uses itself as the example. One of its "main value props," it says, is a higher ratio of affluent professionals in its audience, which in a guideline it would phrase as: "Position Microsoft Advertising as a premium inventory media buy with a higher ratio of wealthy working adults that brands can reach across work, life and play."

A screenshot of the settings panel adds a detail the text does not state. Each guideline field carries a character counter, and the four examples shown - including "Never imply that products are low cost" and "Capitalize every word in a headline" - each add up to about 300 characters when their length is combined with the remaining count, by PPC Land's calculation. The panel itself says "You can add up to 40 guidelines."

Google's equivalent control works differently in scale. Its text guidelines for AI Max and Performance Max, introduced as a beta in September 2025 and opened globally in February 2026, combine up to 25 term exclusions with up to 40 messaging restrictions per campaign.

AI-assisted campaign creation: new sign-ups only

The onboarding flow is limited to advertisers who are new to the platform. It builds a Performance Max campaign draft from a website, an optional campaign brief, an optional marketing plan, optional brand guidelines and additional instructions. "Copilot uses that information to build a snapshot of your business and translate it into a campaign," the newsletter says.

The advertiser can edit the snapshot and the campaign before launch, including bid strategy, budget, ad copy, creative assets, audience signals, search themes and negative keywords. "Nothing goes live until you choose to launch it," Microsoft states.

One sentence in this section does not resolve. "Two newer Microsoft Advertising experiences put that idea into practice at different stages of campaign planning," the newsletter says, referring to AI "in service of humanity." It then describes only one. The second is not named.

Microsoft has offered AI help at sign-up before. In May 2024, Copilot became available to all advertisers in the platform, with ad copy and image suggestions generated from a website address during campaign creation.

Conversions API: deduplication and a push away from the offline API

The measurement section starts from a premise about what bidding systems are told to chase. "A conversion isn't automatically a good outcome," the newsletter says. "If every form fill is treated equally, automated bidding doesn't inherently know which leads became qualified opportunities, customers, or revenue."

Microsoft's answer is its Conversions API, which the newsletter describes as "fully GA with a 90-day event upload window." It can send signals from "web, app, CRM, offline, and call-center interactions," including qualified leads, opportunities, purchases and offline sales. The 90-day window marks a change from the pilot: when PPC Land reviewed the documentation in September, the API rejected event timestamps older than seven days and access required per-account approval.

The newsletter adds two operational details. "We dedupe between the online signals sent via UET and CAPI through eventid," it says, so a purchase reported by both the browser tag and the server connection is counted once. And: "If you're currently using our offline conversions API, it's worth upgrading to CAPI." It does not say whether the offline conversions API will be retired, or on what timeline.

The section's conclusion is framed as a principle. "AI-powered optimization is only as useful as the definition of success you give it," according to Microsoft.

Clarity: what Ask Clarity cannot see yet

The newsletter links paid media to two Microsoft Clarity products launched on November 4, which PPC Land covered in Microsoft Clarity puts Shopify and WooCommerce products in Copilot and Bing.

Ask Clarity analyses on-site behaviour when asked why visitors from a campaign are not converting, and links its findings to session recordings. The newsletter suggests using it to test whether the traffic, the forms or checkout, or the conversion tracking is at fault "before changing your bids." It also sets a limit: "Ask Clarity does not yet analyze your advertising or AI Visibility data." The newsletter labels Ask Clarity simply as "New." In its November 4 announcement, Ask Clarity was in closed beta for retailers, with a waitlist.

Agentic Analytics "shows how AI agents interact with your site, including where they get stuck." The pages agents need to navigate, the newsletter argues, "are often the same pages you're sending paid traffic to." Clarity's own study of more than 5.2 million agent sessions, published October 29, found that checkout appeared in 25% of AI agent sessions against 15% for humans.

The third tool, AI Visibility, reports the grounding queries AI systems retrieve when forming answers about a brand. Microsoft suggests comparing those topics with paid search coverage. "It won't tell you what to bid, but it can tell you what topics or queries you may be overlooking in your paid media campaigns," the newsletter says. Clarity began grouping grounding queries into ranked topics in a beta on July 22.

Performance Max: guardrails, not control

The Performance Max section is framed around restraint. "While we are adding more PMax controls based on feedback, the goal shouldn't be to control every decision," the newsletter says. "It should be to put guardrails around the things you know aren't right for your business, then give the system room to find additional value." It goes further: "Every unnecessary restriction potentially narrows the opportunity PMax has to discover demand." The advice comes from the company that sells the inventory Performance Max buys.

For testing, Microsoft points to uplift experiments, which are "designed to isolate the increase in conversions from adding PMax alongside comparable Search, Shopping, or Audience campaigns" - a form of incrementality measurement. Search term and auction insights reporting for Performance Max "are available," the newsletter confirms. When Microsoft added conversions, clicks and spend to placement reports in May 2026, auction insights were still described as coming soon.

What the newsletter leaves out

The edition gives no rollout dates for any interface change and does not separate what is live from what is planned. It provides no performance data for any feature. It does not name the markets where the redesign is available, the date the search term landing page report went live, or when any pilot ends. Messaging guidelines are called both a beta and a pilot. One of two promised onboarding experiences is missing. The newsletter also refers to improvements to Microsoft Advertising Editor in its summary but describes none.

The final section is a list of links - certifications for Search, Retail and Display and Video, guides on holiday shopping and AI, Support and Q&A pages, an account suspension appeals page, and the Ideas portal for feature requests.

Why this matters

The interface changes arrive as Microsoft hands more of each campaign to automation. AI Max began rolling out to all Microsoft Advertising accounts on August 19. Max CPC disappeared from new non-portfolio campaigns on October 1. The Conversions API became generally available in October, and Microsoft's onboarding flow now places first-time advertisers directly into Performance Max. Each step leaves advertisers more dependent on reporting to see what the system is doing - which is what the bidding views, search term drill-downs and target trend lines in this update are for.

The pattern is a familiar one: automation first, visibility afterwards. Microsoft launched Performance Max globally in March 2024 with exclusions and search reporting promised for later; search term and auction insights reporting were only described as available in October 2026.

The commercial stakes are visible in Microsoft's results. Revenue in its Search and advertising line, which now includes LinkedIn's advertising and Premium subscriptions, rose 10% to $6.55bn in the three months to September 30. A platform asking advertisers to trust more automation has reason to make the account itself easier to use, and to stop people getting stuck at the sign-in page.

What remains open is timing. Device targeting has moved from a promised rollout to a pilot, brand exclusions from refinement to a pilot, and the redesign from announcement to "only the beginning." The newsletter closes by inviting questions for its next edition.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Microsoft Advertising, in the November edition of its product newsletter, published on LinkedIn without a named author. The changes affect advertisers and agencies managing Search, AI Max and Performance Max campaigns on Microsoft's network, new advertisers signing up in English-speaking markets, and users of Microsoft Clarity.

What: Microsoft described an overhaul of its campaign management interface covering navigation, reporting tables, filters, search term reporting, bid strategy reports that compare targets with actual results, sign-in troubleshooting, user access and recommendations. It also said device targeting and text-ads-only brand exclusions for Performance Max are in pilot, age and gender exclusions are generally available, AI-assisted campaign creation is open to new advertisers in markets including the US, Canada, UK and Australia, and messaging guidelines that conflict with an advertiser's own landing pages or assets may not be treated as hard rules.

When: The newsletter is dated today, November 9, 2026. It follows Microsoft's October 28 product roundup and the November 4 Clarity launch. No dates are given for the interface changes or for the end of any pilot.

Where: The interface changes apply to the Microsoft Advertising platform, with no markets stated. Campaigns run across Microsoft's network, including Bing, Copilot and Microsoft's other properties. AI-assisted campaign creation is limited to English-speaking markets.

Why: Microsoft says the redesign responds to advertiser feedback about hard-to-use reporting, sign-in failures and generic recommendations. As more bidding, targeting and copywriting moves to automated systems, reporting that shows what those systems do, and conversion data that reflects business value, become the main ways advertisers can check them.