Help Center

What: The BlueConic Microsoft Advertising Connection allows you to send data from BlueConic to Microsoft Advertising to target audiences on search engines and platforms like Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Outlook, and MSN. This connection supports batch runs to update and create Customer Match lists in Microsoft Advertising.

About BlueConic: The BlueConic Customer Data Platform harnesses the data required to power the recognition of an individual at each interaction, and then synchronizes their intent across the marketing ecosystem.

Why: By sending segmentation and user profile property data to Microsoft, you can more effectively reach targeted audiences with digital ads. With this capability, you can stop targeting entire segments of visitors who are not a good fit for your advertising campaigns or create new look-alike audiences based on data from your highest-performing customers or known and anonymous users.

Adding a Microsoft Advertising Connection

1. Click Connections in the navigation bar.
2. Click Add Connection.
3. A pop-up window appears. Check the Show all box. Enter "Microsoft" in the Search bar.

   Click Microsoft Advertising Connection.

4. The Microsoft Advertising Connection page opens. You can expand or collapse metadata fields (favorite, labels, and description) by clicking the gray chevron at the top of the page.
5. In the metadata section you can choose whether to get email notifications when the connection runs or fails to run.
6. Save your settings.

Configuring a Microsoft Advertising connection

Start by authenticating your connection between BlueConic and Microsoft Advertising in the Set up and run page of your connection. Setup instructions differ depending on how you plan to integrate your data using this connection.

Authenticating a Microsoft Advertising connection

To authenticate your connection to Microsoft, click Connect with Microsoft and log in with your Microsoft Advertising credentials. Select the advertising account that you will be using.

Creating Microsoft Customer Match Lists via batch segment export

Add a goal to update BlueConic segment information with Microsoft Customer Match Lists by clicking the Add goal button and selecting Create Microsoft Advertising Customer Match Lists. Follow the steps in the goal to configure it.

1. Link identifiers between BlueConic and Microsoft
   Link identifiers for matching profiles between both systems. Matching by email address is recommended. Identifiers with hashed values are also supported.
   
2. Map BlueConic segments to Microsoft Advertising Customer Match Lists
   Map BlueConic segment data to Microsoft Advertising Customer Match Lists. Enter the name of an existing audience or create a new audience in Microsoft Advertising by typing a new audience name. New audiences will appear in Microsoft Advertising after the connection has run for the first time.
   
   
3. Optional: Remove profiles from Microsoft Advertising Customer Match Lists
   Check this option if you want to remove profiles from the corresponding Microsoft Advertising Customer Match Lists if it is no longer in the corresponding BlueConic segment.
   

Running the Microsoft Advertising connection

Tip: Make sure you have added an export goal or goals before running the connection and saved your configuration.

1. Turn the Microsoft Advertising connection on and click the Save button to save your settings.
2. Go to the Set up and run page. Scroll down to the Run history section.
3. To start the export manually, click the Run now button.
4. To schedule the export for a future date, click the Settings icon. Select a scheduling option from the drop-down list:
   • Number of times per day
   • Days of the week
   • Day of the month
   • Weekday of the month

   Set a time for the export.

   Click OK.

Connection Status

Once you've set up and saved your connection, the icon at the top will reflect the status of the connection.

There is an arrow going from BlueConic to Microsoft Advertising, showing that data is being exported from BlueConic to Microsoft Advertising. When the arrow is green, the connection is ready to be used.

Data exchange shows you the total number of unique profiles that have been exported via the connection. Note that this shows the number of unique profiles available for export. Also, if the same profile is exported multiple times, it is counted as 1. 

Note that the Run history for this connection shows the number of profiles exported via batch exports. For real-time data exports, the number of profiles does not appear in the connection's Run history.

Privacy management

Connections can be added to Objectives, allowing for privacy management of the information that is being picked up. A connection will only process the profiles of visitors who have consented to at least one of the objectives that the connection is linked to.