Introduction

Microsoft Advertising Ads has introduced a change to URL structure, similar to Google's Upgraded URLs and known by the same name: Upgraded URLs. The benefits of this format update for Microsoft Advertising advertisers are similar to those of Google, allowing your campaigns to scale across large accounts and reduce (or remove) delays caused by unnecessary editorial review. In this article, we'll walk you through the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URLs migration step-by-step.

When you're ready to begin your self-migration, you can get started below.

If you're a Marin Professional user, you'll need to use a different version of the Self-Migration Guide which you can find here. 

Video Guides

To accompany the written step-by-step guide below, we've also produced a two-part Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URLs Video Guide series. Click the Play button below to watch each video walkthrough now. For the best results with your migration, we recommend that you also read through the step-by-step guide after watching the videos.

Tip: Double-click the videos to watch in full-screen for the best experience. 

Before you begin

We've designed the self-migration process to be as straightforward as possible, but to make things go as smoothly as possible, you'll want to be sure your objects are all in sync between the Platform and Microsoft Advertising. To do this, you can perform a 'hard sync' by following these steps:
 

1. First, navigate to the main Channels tab, then click the Manage Accounts button above the grid.
   
    
    
2. In the left-hand pane of the window that appears, click on the Microsoft Advertising publisher account that you're about to migrate to Upgraded URLs.
    
3. Click the Campaigns sub-tab and your list of campaigns will be displayed. Note that the more campaigns you have in your account, the longer the list will take to load.  
    
4. Use the checkboxes on the left to select all campaigns within the given account to sync, then click Sync. 
   
    

Now that you're all synced up, it's time to begin the self-migration process with Step 1.

Step 1: Request Activation Of The Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URL Builder

As part of the move to Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URLS, we've developed a version of the platform's URL Builder specifically for the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URLs format. Before you continue your self-migration, you'll need to reach out to our Customer Support team to enable the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URL Builder for your account.

To do this, simply click the Contact Us link from any page of the Support Center and choose chat, phone, or ticket to request Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URL Builder activation. 
 

Important note: We strongly recommend that you only begin the migration process if you are sure that you will not need to stop or make any changes before you're able to complete all of the steps. For example, you shouldn't need to edit or create any new objects in the Platform or Microsoft Advertising during migration. Doing so could potentially cause conflicts or errors during the migration. 

Step 2: Setting up the URL Builder

Now that you've had the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URL Builder activated for your account, you'll need to update a few settings within the Platform to prepare for migration. To do that, follow these steps:
 

1. Click the Admin link in the upper-right corner of the Platform.
    
2. Next, click the Revenue sub-tab and finally select URL Builder from the left-hand menu.
   
   
     
    
3. In the URL Builder window that appears, click the + plus icon in the lower-left, then click Microsoft Advertising Upgraded and finally Add.
   
   
   

Step 3: Create your new Tracking Template

The next step in the self-migration process -- configuring the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URL Builder -- leverages your existing Google Tracking Template, which is accessible via the Google URL Builder. Because not all ValueTrack parameters are compatible with both Google and Microsoft Advertising, you may need to make a few changes depending on your URL structure. 

Note: For Microsoft Advertising Shopping Campaigns, you can add tracking templates at the account, campaign, and ad group level, along with the product group level.

To locate your Google URL Tracking Template, simply click on Google in the left of the URL Builder, and look at the Final Template section. 
 

The table below shows the Google parameter and its Microsoft Advertising equivalent. Simply work through your Google URL structure and replace (or remove) any Google parameters to the Microsoft Advertising equivalent until you have a new URL Tracking Template which will work for Microsoft Advertising. 

Step 4: Create your Custom Parameters

Custom Parameters are used to reference Platform-specific parameters and will need to be added to the URL Builder manually. Any Microsoft Advertising ValueTrack parameters, e.g. {device}, or hard-coded parameters are added directly into the Tracking Template (as above) and do not require a Custom Parameter.

Note: In the case of campaign and group names, Google requires the creation of a Custom Parameter for these, but Microsoft Advertising does not. You should instead insert the parameters {Campaign} and {AdGroup} respectively directly into the Microsoft Advertising Tracking Template. 

To make things easy, you can once again copy your existing Custom Parameter information from your Google URL Builder to the new Microsoft Advertising URL Builder. To do so, follow these steps:
 

1. From the URL Builder, click Google on the left-hand side.
    
2. Click into the Custom Parameters sub-tab and make a note of all of the Name/Value pairings, and the specific Level, for each of your Custom Parameters. 
   
   
   
    
3. Next, click back into the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded section of the URL Builder. 
    
4. Click the Custom Parameters sub-tab, then click New MSN Parameter.
    
5. Starting with the first on your list of Google Custom Parameters, begin adding the name, value, and level of each one and clicking Add. Repeat this process until all of your Google Custom Parameters are added to your Microsoft Advertising URL Builder. 
   
   
   
   
    
6. Once all of your Custom Parameters are added, you'll be ready to head to the next step of the migration.

Step 5: Apply your Microsoft Advertising Tracking Template

The next step will apply your newly constructed URL Tracking Template to your Microsoft Advertising account and push it to the publisher. To do so, follow the steps below:
 

1. Navigate to the Platform's main Channels tab
    
2. Use the checkboxes next to any Microsoft Advertising Ads publisher accounts to select the accounts to which you'd like to apply an account-level Tracking Template. Next, click on the Edit button above the grid.
   
   
3. In the Select field to adjust drop-down menu, choose Account Tracking Template.
    
4. In the text box, enter {lpurl}, then click Save. Note: Entering a value in this field will trigger an update of your Tracking Template across your whole account. 
   
   
    
5. Click the Admin link in the upper-right of the screen to access the Activity Log. You should see your latest Microsoft Advertising change queued for sending at the top of the grid. 
    
6. From here, click the Post All Now button. Doing this will push your new Tracking Template to Microsoft Advertising. 
   
   
   
   
    
7. Finally, we'd recommend checking that the new Tracking Template is visible within the Microsoft Advertising user interface. Depending on the size of your account, you may have to wait a few minutes after posting for this change to appear. 
    

Step 6: Create and edit migration bulk-sheets

You'll next need to generate a report (also called bulk-sheet) for each type of object you wish to migrate. You can do this by creating a report via the usual method within the Platform.

Simply head to the relevant tab that contains the trackable objects (for example Keywords) to get started. You simply need to click the Create Report button to produce a report that reflects the layout of the grid at that time. This means that in order to create a report with specific data, you'll first need to use the View Builder to add or remove data.

The tables below list the columns you'll need to add using the View Builder for each type of trackable object. Note that, if you are using redirects, you'll need to use the Click Through URL field rather than the Destination URL field in the examples below.
 

Keywords

Creatives

Note: The Creative ID column is not available via the View Builder, however, if you build a creative level report, this column will be included in your report automatically.

Sitelinks

You can learn more about exporting a list of your current sitelinks here.

Once your report has been downloaded,  it's possible the Group column will be empty. This is because sitelinks are not always linked to a group; this column is not mandatory for editing sitelinks.

Product Groups

Note: If your resolved landing pages (post-click) have domains that are not contained with your redirects, please let your Platform representative know that you are working with obfuscated URLs.
 

Once you've added the relevant fields to the grid, you can simply create a report via the Create Report button. In the bubble, be sure to select Include items with zero clicks to ensure you're downloading all objects in the grid. 

You'll find your new bulk-sheet waiting to be downloaded from the Reports link in the upper-right corner of the Platform. Once you've downloaded it, open it in a spreadsheet editor like Microsoft Excel, then follow these steps:
 

1. Add a new column called Landing Page. This will be home to your final URL. The Landing Page column should contain the base URL of the destination URL. For example, if the destination URL for an object is http://www.example.com?mkwid=abcd, you would insert http://www.example.com into the Landing Page column for that object. 
    
2. Once the new Landing Page field is filled out for every object in the sheet, remove entirely any columns called either Destination URL or Click Through URL. 
    
3. If you are using any specific mobile URLs, you should add an extra column called Mobile Landing Page where you should input the 'clean' base URL for mobile, minus any tracking parameters.
    

Note: If you are using Param1 for Microsoft Advertising keyword-level tracking, the same steps apply. You should also replace instances of {param1} with a URL for your website in your creative URLs. For more information, please read our dedicated Support Center article. 

Step 7: Re-upload your bulk-sheets

The final step of the migration process is a simple matter of re-uploading your edited bulk-sheets. Doing this will cause the Platform to automatically apply your new Tracking Template to all of your objects via the URL Builder. 

For each of your trackable objects, follow these steps:
 

1. From the relevant main grid of the Platform, click the Bulk add/edit link in the lower-left. 
   
   
   
    
2. Next, upload your bulksheets for all trackable objects that require URL migration, being sure that you include the new Landing Page column and verify that it contains the former Destination URL minus tracking parameters. For detailed instructions for carrying out a bulk upload, please read our dedicated Support Center article. 
    
3. You should ensure that you also perform bulk uploads for all other trackable objects that have Custom Parameters and/or Tracking Templates defined for their URLs, such as campaigns and groups.

Step 8: Confirming your migration with Customer Support

Before you kick back and relax, there are just a couple more things to take care of.

Please reach out to our Customer Support team and inform them that you have completed the Self-Migration Guide and that your account is now migrated to Upgraded URLs. You can reach our Customer Support team (via various channels including phone and email) by clicking the Contact Us link in the upper-right corner of the Support Center.

Doing this will allow our Customer Support team to hide the legacy URL Builder and ensure that only Upgraded URL fields are used going forward. Once the legacy URL Builder is hidden, the name of the URL builder for Microsoft Advertising will be changed back from Microsoft Advertising Upgraded to Microsoft Advertising.
 

One last thing...

Congratulations! You've now completed the Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URLs self-migration process.

As a final step, we strongly recommend that you follow our Microsoft Advertising Upgraded URLs Migration Confirmation Checklist, which will help you confirm that everything has been implemented correctly before you push the changes to Microsoft Advertising.