Technical escalation required: Disable Audience Network delivery for Search campaigns

Hello Ilona,

Thank you for using our Microsoft Advertising Learn Q&A Platform! 

I understand that you wish to opt out of audience ads. I hope the information and resources provided here will be much more illuminating about Audience Ads and the Audience Network.

Microsoft Audience Ads is a performance marketing solution for advertisers who want to connect with their ideal audience and drive return on investment (ROI). This feature enables advertisers to serve highly relevant ads to an audience who is ready to convert. Microsoft Audience Ads experiences—such as ads placed within articles—are engaging for users, integrate naturally into page content, and deliver visually rich ads for advertisers. Audience Ads are easy to set up, maintain, and optimize because they are fully integrated with existing Microsoft Advertising workflows. Search ads are automatically eligible to be transformed into Audience Ads, and advertisers are able to set up standalone audience campaigns as well.

Microsoft Audience Ads appear on the Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN). These ad placements are cross-device and include premium sites like MSN, Outlook.com, Microsoft Edge, and other partners (with more to come). Clicks on these ads will take users to the landing page you specified when you created your ads. Microsoft Audience Ads are unique because they're targeted to users based on our understanding of their interests. We use consumer intent signals, which include search history, browse history, page content, and demographic information. These signals, combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, provide highly relevant content to users and determine which ads to display.

Regular search campaigns are also automatically enabled to serve on the Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN). With increasing pressure to do more with less, savvy marketers can tap into the power of search intent and use it to enhance overall performance across channels. Fueled by the rich intent data from search, the Microsoft Audience Network provides an effective way for you to connect to your potential customers with intent and reach them across the web. With powerful signals—which include search and web activity—you can deliver highly relevant messages to an audience who is ready to convert. When you come to Microsoft Advertising, you can leverage both the Microsoft Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network. Together, these two networks reach more than a billion people delivering strong return on investment (ROI) through artificial intelligence (AI) and rich first-party data. Now, we’re making it even easier for you to find your best customers wherever they are and meet them in the moments that matter. To learn more about success factors, please check out the blog post below:

• Maximizing the power of search intent with Microsoft Advertising

Audience delivery through search coupled with effective Audience campaigns can boost your ads online. Our engineering teams are constantly monitoring our traffic quality metrics and are committed to the following promises:

• Better performance: Autobidding optimizes performance to the campaign goal respectively, for both search and audience networks. This is a major change, as we optimized in aggregate towards the campaign goal before – but now performance is maximized in both the search and audience network individually by slice.
• Comparable CPA and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Campaign CPA and ROAS will be comparable between search and audience. Some variations may exist due to various factors but there will be no more egregious gaps.
• Traffic stability: We continually make improvements to reduce spikes or volatility.

We also recommend that you create dedicated Audience Campaigns. You can learn more here: Microsoft Display and Native Ads. Please keep in mind that while running Audience Campaigns will not prevent Search Campaigns delivery, it will help you optimize directly for delivery to this channel in order to improve your potential ROI.

Customers cannot opt out of Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN) themselves through their accounts. If customers want to prevent delivery to Microsoft sites, they can do so via the steps outlined below.

Excluding Microsoft sites

1. Go to Settings.
2. Go to the Exclusions section.
3. Enter msn.com, outlook.live.com, outlook.com, etc.
4. Select Save.

Excluding Individual Publishers

1. Run a Website URL Report to identify the sites they don't want to show on.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Go to Exclusions.
4. Enter the websites which they wish to exclude.
5. Select Save.

If a customer wants to exclude Search ad delivery to Audience placements, they will need to update Ad Distribution to only target Microsoft Site and select traffic and then manually add the Microsoft sites as Website Exclusions. These will remove most Audience placement impressions for search campaigns. You should periodically monitor your Publisher URL reporting, as new domains may be added to the Search partners as they continue to grow in the future, and these will not be immediately captured through exclusion settings.

You are encouraged to monitor your delivery to the audience network by running website URL reports frequently, to see how you have been performing on websites within the audience network. Running a Website URL (publisher) report shows the impressions, clicks, spend, and conversions for websites on the Microsoft Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network. This data can be sorted by website URL, account, campaign, and ad group. You can run this report in order to see which website URLs are or aren’t performing well enough for your campaign or ad group target settings. For example, if ad impressions at those URLs yield a low click-through-rate, then you might decide to exclude those websites from your campaign.

If you have legal or brand safety reasons to opt out of specific domains within select traffic, you can send a request to Microsoft Advertising Support with your specific business justification. Your current setup is optimized for high-intent search traffic and qualified B2B leads. You cannot fully exclude MSN, Outlook, or Outlook mobile apps from search ad placements, but you are not running Audience/display ads unless you create Audience campaigns. For further exclusion of specific domains within select traffic. For more details, please refer to the following help documents:

What is the Microsoft Advertising Network?

Ad distribution settings

About ad distribution

Learn about using negative keywords to get to the right customers

What are Search ads?

Please keep in mind that adding Microsoft-owned domains (such as msn.com, outlook.live.com, outlook.com, bing.com) to the Website Exclusions list will not block your ads from appearing in Bing Search or other Microsoft Search results. Excluding bing.com only blocks Audience ad placements to Bing.com, not Search ad placements. It is not possible to block Search ad placements to Bing.com. For Search campaigns, Microsoft sites and select traffic (including Bing, MSN, Outlook.com) are reported in aggregate and cannot be manually excluded for delivery. Website Exclusions are primarily intended for Audience Network placements. For Search ads, domains included in the "Microsoft sites and select traffic" category cannot be manually excluded. Even if you add these domains to the exclusion list, ads will still serve on these sites for Search campaigns. Audience campaigns can apply website exclusions as normal, but Microsoft sites (such as msn.com, outlook.com, etc.) cannot be excluded from Audience campaigns either.

To limit Audience Network delivery, it is generally recommended to use ad distribution settings at the ad group level: Select "Microsoft sites and select traffic" to prioritize Search placements. Ad distribution settings are managed at the ad group level, not account or campaign level. Not running dedicated Audience campaigns, as Search campaigns may be extended to Audience placements. Applying website exclusions for Audience campaigns, but note that Microsoft sites cannot be excluded. Using brand suitability controls to exclude sensitive content categories, which can help control where your ads serve across the Microsoft Advertising Network, including Microsoft sites. There is no direct opt-out or bid adjustment for Audience Network delivery that is universally available. You need to contact support for further assistance there.

Our support teams are happy to discuss your account in more detail via phone, chat or email to provide review assistance, please see our support page to reach out! 

I hope the information provided here will at least partly answer your questions.  If you have any additional questions please do not hesitate to reach out to our support. I have also sent you a private message asking for further details. You are more than welcome to respond to me so that I can begin the investigation on my end.

Kind regards, 

Vahid | Microsoft Advertising Support Specialist | 800-518-5689