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API Summer Release. New features for Ad Intelligence and Optimizer Services

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As a continuation of our V9 update, we're very excited to announce some new features to our Ad Intelligence and Optimizer Services. Starting today, these features are available in Sandbox and as a Beta in Production.

Here are the new features coming to the Ad Intelligence and Optimizer Services services:

 

Ad Intelligence

  1. Keyword level bid landscape API
  2. Ad group level bid landscape API

Optimizer

  1. Unified keyword opportunity API
  2. Unified bid opportunity API
  3. Improvements to Apply Opportunities

Keyword Level Bid Landscape API

As we previously announced the data behind the keyword bid landscape UI is now also available via API. The keyword bid landscape provides keyword level bid curves with 4 ~ 7 points to help develop your own bidding strategy. The information for each point includes the actual bid value, estimated impressions, clicks, cost, etc. based on historical data from the last 7 days. The points will surround your current bid and thus allow you to see how different bids would impact your performance. This enables you to take steps to adjust your current bid in order to achieve your client’s goal.

As soon as we launched this feature in the UI, we saw high usage and great adoption. When users checked this curve, more than 50% of them chose to adopt a new bid point and 90% of the time users adopted a higher bid. With scalable access via the API, developers can now build similar UI and insights into their own tools to offer new suggestions on how users can further optimize their campaigns.

For more details please see, GetBidLandscapeByKeywordIds

Ad Group Level Bid Landscape API

Following bid landscape by keywords, this takes our bid tuning functionality one step further. GetBidLanscapByAdGroupIds allows you to see a bid landscape for an entire ad group. We support two modes: DefaultBidOnly and Uniform mode.

  • DefaultBidOnly: This will help you decide on a better default bid and what that means in terms of traffic, cost, etc. This allows you to adjust your ad group default bid without changing custom bids on the individual keyword level.

 

  • Uniform: If you are tired of managing the ad group bid and also adjusting custom keywords bids, then this bid landscape will help you. In this mode the API will tell you if there is a single ad group bid that can achieve similar or better performance as your current mixed bid setting. When you apply this bid landscape, it will override your keyword custom bids and you will just manage the bid at the ad group level.

Other than the two modes, the functionality is very similar to the keyword level bid landscape. You will see 4 ~ 7 points for each ad group each with the bid value and performance estimations. You can easily uses these curves to inform your decisions around your bidding strategy.

For more details please see, GetBidLandscapeByAdGroupIds

Unified Bid Opportunity API

Bid Opportunities can help you get more traffic and improve your Ad Rank. Previously you could only get basic bid opportunities via GetBidOpportunities. We've now extended this API to allow you to explore bid suggestions if your goal is to achieve a specific position (i.e. first page bid price, mainline bid price). The method now allows you specify different types of bid opportunities that you wish to receive through this single API.

A new value set BidOpportunityType has been added as an optional element in the GetBidOpportunities request. BidOpportunityType contains the following values:

  • IncreaseTraffic: Used when your goal is to increase traffic. This is the default value when you didn’t specify an explicit bid opportunity type in API request body. For this opportunity type you will get bid suggestions to help you increase traffic.
  • FirstPage: Used when your goal is to achieve an average position of being on the first page.
  • Mainline: Used when your goal is to achieve an average position of being on the mainline.
  • Mainline1: Used when your goal is achieve an average position of the first ad in the mainline. 

For all the above types, the API will only return any opportunities if there’s a bid increase within 100% of current bid value that will help you achieve that stated goal.

For more details please see, GetBidOpportunities

Unified Keyword Opportunity API

As we previous announced we introduced Broad Match Opportunities in Bing Ads Intelligence. Now you can access the same data via API though the enhanced GetKeywordOpportunities operation.

With this release, a new value set KeywordOpportunityType has been added as an optional request parameter in the GetKeywordOpportunities operation. The KeywordOpportunityType contains the following values:

  • CampaignContext: Use this setting to find new keywords to help drive more relevant traffic to your campaign. This is based on a variety of inputs including your current set of keywords, ad copy and landing page. This is the option by default, if not specified and the API will continue to work as it does today.
  • BroadMatch: Use this setting to find keywords that can broaden your scope and help you reach more customers on closely related searches. This will find keywords that you are currently only setting with Exact and Phrase match.

We introduced a new data object BroadMatchKeywordOpportunity which is only returned if you select broad match as the KeywordOpportunityType.  BroadMatchKeywordOpportunity is derived from original KeywordOpportunity object and contains additional data such as the BroadMatchSearchQueryKPI.  BroadMatchSearchQueryKPI contains rich insight about the closely related search terms which can be reached by the broad match version of your keywords. With this new capability developers can now add keyword discoverability to their tools with ease and uncover additional search terms that their ads could be serving on with broad match.

For more details please see, GetKeywordOpportunities

 

Improvements to Apply Opportunities

In this release, we enhanced the existing ApplyOpportunities operation to now allow you to customize the opportunity before applying it to your campaign. The new data object OpportunityModifier was introduced to allow you change the budget/bid amount in the opportunity before the it is applied. 

For more details please see, ApplyOpportunities

 

We also ensured that the unified keyword, unified bid opportunities and improved apply opportunities methods are backward compatible to our existing operations.Your existing tool will continues work through GetBidOpportunities, GetKeywordOpportunities , and ApplyOpportunities without any changes.

Bing Ads is constantly working to identify opportunities for your client to optimize their campaign performance. We’ll be adding even more bid and keyword opportunity types over time in the unified bid/keyword opportunities methods.

As always, we would love for developers to provide their feedback on our APIs. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them in the comments below.