Microsoft Ads Flyer Extensions

Probably one of the biggest reasons why I love Microsoft Ads is that they offer little differences in their features that you can’t find in Google Ads. And one of them is Flyer extensions. Whether you’re a brick and mortar store with an online presence or just an online store, if you have flyers that live on your website, you can now promote them as an extension that will live alongside your text ads.

So in this video, we’re going to show you where a Flyer extension can appear, and then we’ll show you how easy it is to set up. Before I show you how to create the Flyer extension within Microsoft Ads, I want to show you how they may appear on Bing.com.

Now, since these are so new, I couldn’t find an exact example, but I’ve at least found one example from a Cole’s ad that will show you the general size of how this extension will appear alongside a text ad. First, there are a few other cool things that you want to show. One highlighted right here, this is a multimedia ad, and we have a video on how you can create multimedia ads right here. Go check that one out!

But this little image right here that I’m highlighting right now, alongside the main text ad, is where a Flyer extension will appear. It’s going to be a smaller image, which you will have to add additionally, we’ll show you how to do that. What Coles has right now is a video extension. We have another video talking about Microsoft video extensions. You can watch that one here.

If you click on the video extension, video is going to pop up, and you’re going to play it. But for a Flyer extension, when a user goes up, clicks on the Flyer extension, it’s going to send them to the URL where the flyer lives on your website. To get a better understanding of what a Flyer extension can look like and what’s needed to create one, let’s hop into Microsoft Ads!

To get to your ad extensions, head on down to Ads and Extensions. You can either click on Extensions in the left-hand navigation or choose the option towards the top. Now, at the time of recording this video, Microsoft still calls them extensions.

Google has rolled in extensions into Assets, and now they just call them Assets instead of add extensions. We see Microsoft does have an assets thing. This is mostly for images and videos. Not sure if they’ll ever roll it in. So for now, we just need extensions. When choosing the view, it’s going to default the site link extension.

So we need to click on the drop-down and then choose your Flyer extensions. Since this is brand new, let’s go up and create a new one. And then we’ll need to go down and add a new Flyer extension. For the purpose of this video, I’m going to need some help.

So to help me out, I’m going to use the Menard’s website as an example because on their website, they have a section of all of their weekly flyers. To make things easier, let’s just view all of them. And I’m just going to pick a few of these for the examples to use for this demo. I’m going to start with last-minute gifts. I understand by the time you see this; the holiday season is going to be over. But that’s okay!

Here’s a few things I can start copying over right away. We’re going to need a name of the extension. Last minute gift sale is pretty simple. And then notice the dates that the sale within this flyer is going to run. So heading on back to Microsoft ads, I can head down and start naming my flyer. Next, you’ll need to add a flyer image.

Remember, in the example of the Coles ad where the video extension lived, this is essentially adding like a thumbnail. You don’t want people to look at a super crammed-up image of your flyer within that tiny little box. So I’m highlighting the specs right here. The flyer image must be at least 220 pixels by 220 pixels; cannot be larger than 3.9 megabytes, and you cannot include any watermarks or free shipping text.

So I’m just going to select an image. There’s mine. I just took it from the flyer. Ideally, you’d have something that’s a little bit customized to this experience. Next, we’ll need to pull the URL of the flyer. So I’m going to head back up to the Menard’s website. And I understand this portion is cut off while we’re recording our screen. But I’m copying the URL, pasted it in there. And then if you have a different URL for mobile, go ahead and add an additional one.

Next, you can choose to add a description. We do see that it’s optional. I’m just making something up here. And this is just one example. Could be anything about describing further about the products that are included within the flyer, the type of sale it is. Maybe you want to put an additional message in there, kind of build urgency that it’s only for a limited time, that sort of thing. But as we already saw in the flyer, we have the start date and the end date.

So I’m going to add that two things to note about the start date and end date. First, this is not ad scheduling. You’re not choosing when this flyer extension is going to run. This is letting the users know what dates your offers are good for.

Second, your flyer extension can only run for a month. Odds are you’re running weekly flyers, maybe a couple of weeks at a time. And that’s the ideal type of scenario that a company would want to use flyer extensions any huge month long, like Black Friday offers that start from Thanksgiving that go into January, that’s not really applicable here. Use promo extensions for that sort of thing.

If I am going to jump ahead a little bit, if I scroll down to selected days and hours, here is where you will set the ad schedule on when the flyer extension can run. I’m used to the twelve-hour display time. It’s up to you if you want to choose it from the time zone that was selected when your Microsoft Ads account was set up. In this case, Eastern time.

Or if this is an account that potentially has stores across the country, you can choose it to do from the ad viewers’ time zone. If your store is closed at 10:00 P.m. Eastern Time, you’re still open and the West Coast, and the sales and the offers within your flyer could still be applicable. So maybe you want to use Add Viewers time zone. So then you can go up and actually add the schedule.

You can choose individual days and then add a few rows. You can choose just the weekdays. If you want just the weekends, you’ll have to add each of those days individually. But then you could select your time and essentially tell Microsoft what days and hours of those days are acceptable for a flyer extension to appear alongside your text app.

Now, the part that I skipped over was this optional store, and for a flyer extension, it’s not needed. I skipped over it on purpose, but I have to address it to avoid any confusion. When you do fill out this field, it will be the store name that you have created within your merchant center within Microsoft.

However, this field is only for flyer-sponsored ads, flyer-sponsored Ads, or the Carousel Experience. They’re only available for shopping campaigns. This video is for the flyer extension for your text ads, AKA your search campaigns. So for the search extension, can’t use it, don’t need it. So I can just scroll down and save it.

Well, that’s just one flyer extension, but you can run multiple flyer extensions at the same time. So let me go in and create a second one really quick. I’m going to go up and name this one. Choose the image, paste in my URL. I’m going to skip the description this time. Choose the dates. I’m going to skip the ad schedule stuff just to keep on moving. Click Save. And now I have two flyer extensions created.

Notice that I’m up at the account level. That is the default option when we were creating the new extensions. So let’s pretend that I would have multiple campaigns running within this account. There’s a chance that either of these two flyers could be running up until December 24. That’s when both of them had their end dates.

And I would only do this as more of a safety net or if most of my campaigns that I’m running within the account are generic terms. So these two flyer extensions could appear alongside any active text ad that’s running within the account. That’s where you need to start asking yourself some questions.

First, you may have to ask, do the products that are showing in each of the extensions match the experience of the keywords and ads that I’m running within those particular campaigns or ad groups? And if there seems to be a mismatch, you may not want to run the flyer extension at the campaign level and only hand-select specific campaigns.

So as I switched over to campaign, Microsoft is showing me that I don’t have any flyer extensions associated at the campaign level. So I would need to create new associations. First, I’d select the specific campaigns; understanding our Demo account, we only have the one-click done. And then, I would need to click the plus button to bring over those extensions at the campaign level.

If I click Save, they are now saved at the campaign level for this particular brand campaign, and then you can get even specific and go down to the ad group level. Just remember that the more specific you get, the higher the priority. What that means is if you’re adding extensions at the ad group level, they will override any campaign or account level extensions.

If you’re adding your flyer extensions at the campaign level, they’re going to override any account-level extension. So the more specific you get, the more extensions you’re going to have to create. And in this case, the more flyers or at least flyer URLs you are going to need if you really want to get specific to what you have targeted in those ad groups.

Now, the last thing I will mention would be to remember the geographic location of your flyer. I worked in corporate retail for years before I got into digital advertising, and it was crazy how many different variants of the same flyer were created for different markets all across the country. You can add as many versions of those flyers as you want to Microsoft, but you’ll have to remember your location settings on what you have set up within the campaigns.

So as I hopped into the campaign settings and scroll down, eventually, we’ll get to the campaign target section where we are now controlling the targeted locations. I understand that each account is going to structure their campaigns differently, and I am not saying to completely overhaul your campaign structure just to satisfy the flyer extensions, which probably aren’t going to get a ton of impression share.

But I did want to call this out just so you’re not showing a flyer to users who aren’t going to be able to use the offers that are available within their own region. If I go back up to extensions, click on Extensions again. Want to head back to flyers? There are the ones we have set up at the campaign level.

If I click on Create, I can click on the Minus button to remove the association. I can click on the pencil to edit any of the information; if anything changes or you need to make any corrections going to cancel out of this. But I can’t tell you how many times I made the mistake of thinking the X is unassociating from the level.

No, the X is going to delete it and then you’re going to have to fully recreate it. So just avoid the X from any extension within Microsoft. Stick to the minus or the edit, but for now, that’s all we have for flyer extensions. They are currently available just for text ads within the United States; fully expect that to expand.

Microsoft has said they are going to try to add flyer extensions to shopping campaigns that’s in addition to the sponsored ads that are already running. This is a very simple way to set up and promote the flyers that your internal team is already putting in a ton of work to promote. I know I use the holidays as an example, but this can be used all year round.

If you have any questions on how Flyer extensions can work within Microsoft ads, please let us know in the comments below.

Written by Joe Martinez