Microsoft Ads Filter Link Extensions

We have a few videos covering the differences between Microsoft Ads and Google Ads. This is because Microsoft does have certain features that Google does not offer. One example is the video extension, which we did a video on, you can watch that one right here.

But today, we’re going to talk about another unique extension to Microsoft, that is filter link extensions. Think about the certain categories that you may break up on your website prices, services, deals, certain sales, where you can take those categories and almost create a site link extension specifically for those groupings.

So in today’s video, we’re going to cover how you can set them up, what type of levels you can set them up as, and then show you some examples of when you may want to use the filter link extension.

We’re in the Microsoft advertising interface, and in typical pay media pros fashion, we’re in our demo account. But you can see we are on the campaigns page, but filter link extensions are extensions, so we’ll want to go down a couple and click on ads and extensions, and then towards the top navigation right here, we need to click on extensions.

Next, we’ll need to go to the drop-down, open it up, and in alphabetical order, we just need to find filter link extensions. Before we start creating a new one, I do want to show you something in Microsoft Ads editor. Within editor, if I open up the ads and extensions menu, it may be small to see in the corner, sorry about that, but we can see that filter link extensions are missing.

As of right now when I’m recording this video, you cannot create, edit, copy or paste filter link extensions via Microsoft Ads editor. You can only perform these actions within the desktop version of Microsoft Ads. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that, so let’s go back into the desktop, and now we can head up and click on the create add extension button, because our view is already set to the filter link extensions.

Again, it’s not created within this account, so we need to go down to this blue link right here, add new filter link extension. If you’ve been running paid search ads for a while, this may look a little bit familiar. I could say that we can categorize filter link extensions as a combination of two already existing extensions. You can see we get a header very similar to the structured snippet extensions, but in this case, you can also add final URLs, like a sitelink extension.

Now, I understand the thinking of well, I can just use a site link extension and you could. But as we start seeing the preview of what these extensions look like, this is better for grouping a range of different things, let me show you what I mean. For the sake of this demo, I’m going to be looking at the Her Universe website.

They’re not a client of ours, I just think the whole brand is awesome, so I wanted to showcase them. We will be hopping back and forth a little bit. But first, let’s look at the headers that we can select. These are predefined, you cannot create your own. So first, you can go over and choose one of the supported languages.

As you see, I cannot scroll up and down so the options that we have right here are the only ones available at this moment. I’m going to leave it as English, and then head over to the header options. These are predefined, we cannot create our own custom headlines for these extensions, so it’s good to run through the options that we have right now.

There are 36 of them, I’m not going to read all of them, you can see most of them right here, and many of them are also the same type of headers that we get for structured snippets. But there are some unique ones to the filter link extensions. If I go down a little bit, there we can see the remaining options.

But to start off, I’m going to keep it simple, let me choose brands. This is where I’m going to be hopping back and forth a lot between the Her Universe website and the Microsoft Ads interface.

First, I’m going to enter in some values, these are brands that I know that Her Universe website sells. As I go down, I can add more value rows. But then after the values, you can start entering the final URLs for each category. First, let’s go up and grab star wars, I’m already on that page.

I believe doctor who was the second one, so I can go by that specific brand page, then one more from Marvel. Grabbing that URL, and then pasting it in there. Moving over one column to the right, if you have different mobile-specific URLs, you can enter them to each of these individual fields, that’s fine. Then for whatever reason, if you want to change the order of the values, we see the down and up arrows. So I can bring doctor who upfront, and that’ll be the first one a user sees. You can go in and edit the order of these at any time, after you have the filter link extension saved.

But if you’re good with all your values and your URLs, you can add specific tracking templates to these URLs. Michelle made another video about these tracking templates, and you can watch that video right here. I’m going to close that out if you don’t need it, and then the last option before we can save is looking at selected days and hours. When I run through a different example, we’ll get to this one later.

So I’m going to skip it for now, and then save it. Going back to what I said about the thinking of, well, couldn’t I just use a site link extension instead? Yes, you could. But in that case, each brand would have to be in its own extension. In this case, as we can see from the example, I can have multiple links within one extension. It’s giving me more opportunity as an advertiser to help the user find what they’re looking for.

So overall generic brands type filter link extension could be helpful for extensions at the account level. Again, I don’t know anything about Her Universe and what they’re doing within PPC or paid media, but let’s assume they’re running a branded campaign. If someone’s just going to Bing and typing in Her Universe, we don’t know what type of products they want.

So having this one set up at the account level for some of the higher-level categories, is something most likely they would be willing to test. If we head back up to the website, we see they have a ton of different licenses, a lot of different brands. So they would know internally which would be the best brands they would want to test. Then at the account level, we see up in the top navigation different categories, and most likely they’re sorted by the most popular categories.

So another option they might want to test at the account level, and I can create a new one, could be departments or types, and then the values could be, I believe it was new plus women. If I want to add another one, I think our universe was the fourth one, and in the final URLs, and maybe test that one out for your account level extension, and then when we get to reporting, we’ll be able to compare those two.

I’m just going to cancel out of that one. Just like the other extensions, you can create deeper-level extensions for the campaign and ad group. If you create specific campaign-level extensions, those are going to get priority over the account-level extensions. What I mean is that specific campaign will only show the campaign level extensions. So if the account level extensions are different, they will not be shown for that specific campaign, and the same thing goes for the ad group.

Any ad group-level extensions will get priority over both the campaign and the account-level extensions. So for all the examples that I’m going to have for the remainder of this demo, we’re going to keep getting deeper into the different types of levels. So we’re still on the account level filter link extension, and there we did it for brands.

Since if you know me by now, I’m a massive Star Wars nerd. So I got to keep it to star wars. So I hop back to Her Universe, we’re back on the star wars page. While I still have their brands up top, if I scroll down, Her Universe has different filters and another filter link extension that could be pretty common will be price. You see there are several options here, for this demo, I’m not going to include all of them, just so I can keep things moving.

So now let’s pretend Her Universe has a Star Wars specific campaign. If the entire campaign is just about Star Wars, I don’t want to show an account-level extension that talks about doctor who and Marvel, let’s keep it Star Wars. So I’m going to head back up to Microsoft, go down to the campaign level. So as I’m creating a campaign level extension, we see by the pencil here, I had to select my specific campaign, and that is the star wars campaign.

If I already had a bunch of filter extensions created that makes sense, I can just click the plus button to select it and add it to this particular campaign. But as I just said earlier, this entire campaign is just about Star Wars, so we don’t want those two other brands showing up.

In Microsoft, if you want to remove an extension association from any level, make sure you click on the minus, not the x. The x will delete the extension from the account, so don’t do that, I’ve made that mistake so many times. Make sure you click on the minus symbol, and that will just bring it back over to the left side. Okay, but we need to go down a little bit and create a new filter link extension for the Star Wars campaign level.

So I’m going to go up and choose prices, and then I can go up and start entering the values I would want for this extension. So first, I’m going to go in and enter some values that I know are available for that specific price filter. There were seven total, I’m just going to enter in three just to make things easier, and then we would want the final URL. So luckily for this website, if I click under ten, we see a filter was added to the URL.

So I’m going to copy the URL and paste that in for my under ten dollars, I’m going to have to do the same thing for the other prices. Scroll back down, change my filter, the URL changes again, paste that one in, and then we got to head back for the last one.

One more time, copy my URL, head back to Microsoft, paste it in. Again, I could add all the price values if I want to, most likely I would, but I want to keep moving, so I’m going to save this.

So now when people are looking for the keywords that would be in my Star Wars campaign, they could see this filter link extension within the text ad, showcasing the different price range, helping users find specifically what they’re looking for. Let’s do another one at the campaign level, I’m going to go back up to my header.

Another one I’m going to select because I know they have these filters on the Her Universe website would be sizes. Using the same examples that Microsoft is showing me just above, I’m going to do small, medium, and large. So I can head back up, go back down here. First, I’m going to clear my filter. So I’m getting all products within this category, and then I need to go back down and then choose by size.

They have a lot of different sizes. Again, trying to keep it simple, so first I need small, back up again, I need medium, grabbing that URL, paste it in medium and then the last one we need is large. There’s the final one, I’m good with that, I could save it. The Her Universe website made it easy that I was still on the main Star Wars URL, and then all the filters were just additional parameters at the end.

It is possible that both of these filter extensions could show up within any of my text ads in this Star Wars campaign. Giving the user more options to find what they’re looking for, make it easier for them, maybe price is more important to them, they can click on that. Maybe they don’t care about price, they just want to find their size, show them the options for their size. Because any click on a filter link extension is charged the same CPC as a click on the add headline.

So if users are going to find these appealing and click on them, it’s best to help the user find what they’re looking for so they can make the purchase or reach out to you, to make the click on that ad worth it. I’m going to do one more at the campaign level, just so I can show the ad scheduling portion. Since this video is dropping right before thanksgiving, let’s stick to a Black Friday theme.

We clearly know that black Friday or cyber-Monday, whatever type of weekend sale you have, it’s not a year-round thing, it’s a very limited sale. I know some companies seem to start running them for the entire last quarter, that’s fine. But you know what I mean. If I create a new filter link extension, go up and choose my header, we see there is an option for deals, right now there aren’t holiday-specific options.

I’m just going to enter in a bunch of fake values here, and I’m not going to flush out the URLs because I’m not going to save this one, but you can see we can’t have duplicate values, that’s okay, I wasn’t planning on it. Okay, let’s say we have certain black Friday links and URLs that we would want to promote for this particular campaign. I can then go down to selected days and hours and choose a specific start date and end date.

Maybe my deals are starting a little bit early starting, the week of thanksgiving, and then it’s going to end on cyber-Monday. I can also add a specific ad schedule, probably more helpful for the service-based accounts. In this case, this is e-commerce most likely I’d want it running all the time, and then you can choose the particular time zone. The sales are going on within the ad viewer’s time zone, instead of your account, you can select that option and then save it.

So in this case, this extension will only run between the dates that I have selected. That way I don’t have to worry about going back in and manually turning it on or turning it off, I can enjoy my holiday. As soon as you know you have a sale coming up, where the links are going to live, proactively prep this filter link extension, and just set an ad schedule.

So when the sale actually comes up, you don’t have to worry about it because you already have everything in place. Now since I don’t have URLs in it, I can’t save it, so I’m just going to cancel. If I’m good with these campaign-level extensions, I’m going to save it just so I don’t lose it. There we see these filter link extensions are attached to this specific campaign. Now one more, I’m going to go to the ad group level. Create an extension, choose my ad group, there are Star Wars, there’s the one ad group I have under here, I’m good with that. Again, I don’t want any of these, because these are the higher-level extensions.

There was my account one, and these two just based on the URLs, and the filters were just for the overall Star Wars category. If I want links just specifically for the Ahsoka Tano products, I need to go down and create a new one, and in this case, I’m going to choose styles.

There were other options for types, goods, maybe some wording I would want to play around with later. But for now, I’m just going to choose some specific values, and then I’ll enter in my final URLs. I already have them pulled over on another screen, so I’ll just paste them in really quick.

Now one thing I didn’t show you is that the Her Universe website doesn’t have filters for product categories. So what I had to do was search for the product, in this case, I said Ahsoka T’s, and then this is the URL for the search results. It’s not a specific filter URL. So that’s why we see all these have search features, but they’re legit URLs that’ll still be there based on the query.

Just good functionality of the website that’ll help our advertising. If I save this one, there we can see this particular ad group will only show the filter link extension for these Ahsoka product categories. If you didn’t know, she’s a character in Star Wars.

So if people are looking for Ahsoka merchandise, typing in search queries that can relate to my Ahsoka keywords within the account, then I can help them find the Ahsoka merchandise that they’re looking for. Hopping back to the campaign level extensions, these users typing in overall Star Wars merchandise keywords will see these level extensions, and then for the account, if they’re typing into certain brands, maybe overall fan girl merchandise keywords.

We don’t know exactly what type of product they’re looking for, we can have a few at the account level, to try to get a better understanding of who our potential user is from a first touchpoint. So there we see is the more specific we get within our account structure, we want to make sure our extensions fit with each of those different levels to help the user find what they’re looking for. If I go back to campaign, I just want to go over a little bit on the reporting. Because there we see specific columns, where we can review performance on how the filter link extension is doing whenever you have these live.

As always, you can segment in a variety of different ways, time, audience, the conversion action, the device, which network, and also you can go to the columns, modifier columns, and add different information if you want to look at it for this particular extension. Don’t need to do that right now.

One thing I do want to say as you’re reviewing the performance is that you’re only going to get the information from the header level, in this case, prices or sizes. There’s no way to break down this information even further to see did small do better than medium? Did medium do better than large? That type of thing.

So you’re stuck within the overall level of the extension. This gives you different opportunities to play around with different types of extensions. So in this case, we’ll have to judge the performance of do people prefer the prices filters or do they prefer the sizes? Maybe we need to create multiple filter link extensions just for the sizes. Are there certain sizes your target audience prefers first? Do we need to rearrange the order? I know that seems odd, to go out of order a small medium large, but maybe we need to go large medium small.

Little tweaks like that if you find information based on previous performance. Little tweaks like that can make a difference, it all depends on what you’re seeing internally. But as of right now, that is what we can do with Microsoft’s filter link extensions. You can still run your structured snippets, still, run your sitelink extensions, but add filter link extensions if it makes sense to group certain categories together.

I just gave you an eCommerce example, thanks again to Her Universe. But if you go back and look at the header options, there are options out there that will fit b2b lead gen service type accounts. If there are any additional questions you may have about this particular extension, let us know in the comments below and we’ll try to get back to you.

Written by Joe Martinez