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Microsoft Advertising Editor is a powerful offline management tool with features that make creating and updating your campaigns simple. These features allow you to make bulk changes to campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords quickly and efficiently.

With the latest Microsoft Advertising Editor tips, this training will help you understand how to:

  • Use features in Microsoft Advertising Editor like copy/paste and find/replace to optimize keywords.
  • Identify specific errors and warnings.
  • Create and manage a shared budget and make keyword edits.
  • Use Advanced search options to filter items.

Copy/paste

Similar to copying a Word file to modify and save as a new file, with the Microsoft Advertising Editor management tool, you can create a new campaign by copying an existing campaign from one account to another. Here’s how to do it:

In the left hand navigation, select the account containing the campaign you want to copy. In the Summary Grid, click the Campaigns tab, then find the campaign, right-click, and select Copy. This campaign is now on your clipboard. In the left hand navigation, select a different account, right-click and select Paste. The entire campaign, including its properties, ad groups, ads and keywords is now duplicated in a different account and ready for your changes.

You can copy just the shell of a campaign or ad group — including settings like language, device target, demographics, and site exclusions — in order to fill it with new ads and keywords.

You can also copy just the keyword text of selected keywords, making it easier to paste them into an editor such as Microsoft Excel. Another option is to selectively paste different settings of a selected campaign or ad group.

If you only need to make changes to one or two campaigns, you no longer have to download all recent changes or your full account. You can now pick which campaigns to get and to post. Just click Get changes and then select Campaigns I select — or click Post changes and then select the campaigns you want to upload.

Note: You can now drag and drop items within your account or across accounts.

Find and replace

The Find and replace feature lets you update ad copy, like a holiday name, in seconds.

Begin by selecting the ads you want to update from the Ads tab. In the Editor pane, click the Replace text button. In the Find what box, type the words you want to change. In the Replace with box, type the replacement text. From the Search In drop-down menu, select which parts of the ad copy you would like to update. Now, click Replace All. The specified ad copy is updated in all selected ads.

Advanced search

The Advanced search window in the Microsoft Advertising Editor management tool gives you easy access to search criteria.

You can set multiple parameters in order to find items with several attributes. Choose from Active, Paused, Inactive, Disapproved and Deleted.

For example, say you want to update only the bids in your Paused campaigns. Click Paused, and add your search criterion.

 

Advanced search

Advanced search

If you think you’ll use this filter again, click Save as custom search. Once saved, you can use it anytime from the View drop-down above the Summary Grid.

Click Search. The filtered keywords will be displayed in the Summary Grid. Now, select the keywords and change the bid amount in the Editor pane. Notice how the bid changes for all keywords, and the Sync state column signals the changes with updated icons.  

Note: Any duplicate items except one, will be skipped, eliminating the need for you to manually delete them.

Read more about searching your campaigns in Microsoft Advertising Editor.

Keyword Edits

With Microsoft Advertising Editor, you can edit the text of your keywords and post the changes to Microsoft Advertising. Just click the Keywords tab and then edit your keywords in either the Manager pane or the Editor pane.

You can cut, copy and paste negative keywords from one shared list to another. Simply go to Shared library > Negative Keywords > Neg. keywords in list. Select the keywords you want to copy, right-click and cut or copy. You can then paste those negative keywords into another list or into a specific campaign or ad group. Similarly, you can right-click, then cut or copy negative keywords already in a campaign or ad group and add them to a shared list or different campaign or ad group.

You can also drag and drop a shared list from the Negative keywords lists tab to a campaign in the Browser pane to associate that list with the campaign.

Shared Budgets

Microsoft Advertising supports shared budgets, where the ads are automatically distributed in a single daily budget across multiple campaigns within your Microsoft Advertising account. You create and manage them in Microsoft Advertising, and see them in Microsoft Advertising Editor.

After you’ve set up your shared budgets, you can easily go back to your Shared Library and click View Budgets again. The shared budgets you created will appear in the table. You can keep track of each shared budget's performance, and if a shared budget has run out of funds for the day, its status will appear as Budget paused. You can also click the budget in the table to see how the budget is spent across the different campaigns that use it. (You can always go back to using individual budgets for complete control over how much you spend on each campaign.)

Errors & warnings

Microsoft Advertising Editor makes it easy to see errors, warnings and opportunities with the following:

  • Notification icons appear in the notification type column in the Summary Grid.
  • Notification bars appear at the top of the Summary Grid. The notification message column is not displayed in the Summary Grid by default, but you can select the row to view the message in the Edit pane.
  • Account-level notifications appear in a red bar at the top of the Summary Grid, and indicate when and why an account is inactive.

In the Summary Grid, items with errors are indicated by a red circle with an exclamation point (”!”). The error icon also appears on the tabs that contain errors. Error types include:

  • Warning notifications indicate the potential for undesired behavior, like negative keyword conflicts.
  • Information notifications provide additional details that are unrelated to delivery issues, like pending editorial review.
  • Opportunity notifications indicate opportunities for improvement, like low bids.

The Microsoft Advertising Editor management tool makes it easy to focus on critical items first. Just sort or filter by the notification type, or click the View errors button in the Errors notification bar. The error view reveals only items with errors. It enables the error message column, which explains how to correct them. Once you’ve corrected all errors, click View and select the preset view All.

If your campaigns contain data generating warnings, the Warning notification bar replaces the Error notification bar. This occurs when you are in All view. Click the View menu and choose Warnings to filter by the warning notification type.

If you modify the data generating warnings and return to the All view, the Information notification bar replaces the Warning notification bar. This occurs when your campaigns contain data generating information notifications. Close Notification bars to increase your work area. You can always return to a view by selecting it from the View menu.

Summary

We’ve just covered many powerful features and offered a wide range of Microsoft Advertising Editor tips to help you gain greater control over accessing and posting ad copy. You can use Microsoft Advertising Editor to edit campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords quickly and efficiently.

Thanks for reading this training on Microsoft Advertising Editor account management tips. Continue your training or take the Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional exam to become certified.

Please note all features in this training may not be available in your market.