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May 12, 2017
PC

Introducing Microsoft’s new Ad Monetization Platform

Earlier this week, we kicked off our annual developer conference Microsoft Build in front of over 5,000 developers at Washington state convention center with viewers watching the event live around the world. During the keynote and other live sessions, we had several announcements that featured tools and services for PC, Tablet & Web developers to monetize and acquire through the Microsoft’s new ad monetization platform.

Microsoft’s new ad monetization platform brings together innovative consumer ad experiences, federated cloud based smart mediation service, and best-in-class universal user acquisition and engagement service in a single platform, so you can maximize your ad revenue and grow your app business by deeply engaging with your users.

Let’s take a closer look at the major announcement.

Maximize your ad revenue

Ad monetize your app with the new Microsoft’s ad mediation platform

Microsoft ad mediation platform

In-app advertising continues to represent more than one-third of the revenue that developers make from writing apps for the Microsoft Windows platform. As part of our continuous commitment to maximize developer monetization through ads, we are excited to announce Microsoft’s ad mediation service, a federated cloud-based ad mediation service designed to help app developers maximize their ad revenue. The ad mediation service along with the Microsoft Advertising SDK are the two key components of Microsoft’s new ad monetization platform that dynamically optimizes ad network configurations to drive the highest yield for the developers and deliver innovative ad experiences for consumers.

Microsoft’s ad mediation service is now available to all developers through the Dev Center. Read more about this announcement here.

Choose the right ad experiences

Drive app advertising revenue by seamlessly integrating the right ad treatments into your app by our rich set of ad formats. Wide variety of formats means you have lots of choices to provide the best user experience.

Interstitial ads

We are also excited to announce the launch of interstitial banner ads support in the Microsoft Advertising SDK. Interstitial banner ads have been one of the top Windows Dev Center feature requests since we introduced support for interstitial video ads. Read more about this announcement here.

Native ads

Microsoft Advertising SDK now supports native ads. Native ads allow developers to create and implement highly immersive ads that fit their app experiences. Developers can now stitch beautiful ad experience completely native to their apps using the new capability provided by the SDK. This feature is currently available as a limited preview to participating developers/publishers.

Please contact [email protected] to get started.

Empowering app growth for Windows developers

Ad campaign to acquire & re-engage with users

Microsoft Universal User Acquisition Platform offers unparalleled self-served tools from Windows Dev Center & REST APIs to help developers promote & re-engage with users. Dev Center App Install Ad Campaigns underwent a major usability improvement. The new workflow helps developers automate campaign targeting, and creative generation to find your most valuable users based on your in app conversions. These innovative experiences are currently available for Insider users and will be generally available to everyone along with the overall Dev Center changes. Developers who haven’t used ad campaigns can read about the full suite of capabilities here.

Auto designed interstitial, native and playable ads

We have enabled adding banner interstitial ads to the creative mix without the developer having to create the artwork. Just click on one check box in the creative section and the banner interstitial that can scale across different device resolutions gets created. The best part of this capability is that you can also use the same ad for your house and community campaigns, which are completely free of cost. Just use the latest SDK to enable interstitial ads in your app, and then opt in to house and/or community ad campaigns.

You can promote your app through native ad experiences now. All the elements that are used to create an auto-generated ad like app title, logo, tagline and price etc. will now be sent as assets to the app developer showing the ads so that they can be stitched in an experience native to the app. All new ad campaigns will have these ads automatically created in the backend using the same elements that the user selects for creating ads in the campaign.

Developers can create a three-minute interactive version of the app as an ad using this capability. This feature is in developer preview and developers can sign-up for getting their apps streamed at [email protected]. Read more about this capability here.

What’s next

We look forward to helping many more developers build and grow successful businesses. At Microsoft //Build 2017, we have shared essential insights and best practices on how to drive growth with Microsoft’s new ad monetization platform. You can take part too by viewing the live streamed and pre-recorded sessions ad monetization and user acquisition.

Check out the new website for more details, then give the features a try! If you’ve got suggestions to make these features even more useful, please let us know at Windows Developer Feedback.