Microsoft Advertising is preparing an open pilot of AI Max for Search campaigns in May, as the corporate adds more promoting, analytics, and commerce tools across Bing, Copilot Search, and Copilot Answers.
AI Max uses artificial intelligence to support expanded query matching, asset personalisation, and URL routing for search campaigns. Microsoft said the tool is designed to assist advertisers serve ads across AI-powered search surfaces, where user queries may be longer and more detailed than traditional search terms.
Advertisers must opt in to make use of AI Max. Microsoft said it is going to also add controls corresponding to brand inclusions and exclusions, term exclusions, and messaging constraints, giving advertisers more ways to set boundaries around campaign delivery.
The company said search term and asset reporting shall be available from the beginning. These reports are intended to point out advertisers how AI Max is matching queries, using creative assets, and contributing to campaign results.
The announcement also includes updates to Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Merchant Center, Copilot Checkout, Brand Agents, Offer Highlights, and audience targeting tools. Microsoft said the products are intended to support advertisers and merchants across search, AI-assisted discovery, and commerce inside Copilot.
Microsoft said automated traffic is growing faster than human traffic, while AI-driven sessions nearly tripled in 2025. It also said agentic browser traffic rose by about 8,000% 12 months over 12 months.
Microsoft said these changes require businesses to offer information that AI systems can find, cite, and use. That includes website content, product data, pricing, inventory, and structured commerce information.
Clarity adds AI visibility data
One update is the expansion of AI Visibility in Microsoft Clarity. The feature, first launched to chose customers in February, shows AI bot activity and citations, including which website pages are referenced in AI-generated answers.
Microsoft said upcoming Clarity AI Visibility updates will show which pages influence AI responses, even when a user doesn’t click through to an internet site. The tool will even compare how much of an AI response comes from an organization’s content against content from competitors.
The expanded Clarity feature will even show when peer or competitor pages are cited as a substitute of an organization’s own pages. Microsoft said the tool will discover topics where a brand is underrepresented and provide recommendations on content gaps.
Merchant Center adds UCP-ready feeds
In commerce, Microsoft introduced support for Universal Commerce Protocol-ready feeds in Microsoft Merchant Center for businesses within the United States. UCP-ready feeds are intended to assist businesses provide structured product data that may be surfaced in Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft described open protocols as a standard language for AI agents to speak with business systems. UCP-ready feeds give merchants a structured option to send product information to AI shopping systems.
Microsoft can also be integrating Shopify Catalog into Copilot through its commerce API. The integration gives Copilot access to Shopify product data, including pricing, inventory, and product attributes, without requiring merchants to construct separate integrations or maintain additional feeds.
Microsoft said Shopify Catalog structures, enriches, and syndicates product data in real time. The company said early results showed top Shopify merchants recorded nearly 90% growth in impression share in Copilot through real-time feeds from Shopify Catalog.
Copilot Checkout expands
The company can also be extending Copilot Checkout, which allows transactions to happen inside Copilot while keeping the merchant because the merchant of record. Microsoft said it’s expanding catalogue data to greater than 500,000 merchants and extending availability to Copilot’s mobile apps.
Target is among the many early partners for loyalty experiences in Copilot. The retailer has enabled account linking, allowing Target Circle members to see advantages corresponding to exclusive discounts and free shipping on the checkout page.
Microsoft can also be expanding Brand Agents, its conversational shopping assistants for merchant web sites. The feature, launched for Shopify merchants, is being prolonged to WooCommerce merchants, with support for brand and policy materials and improved reporting.
Brand Agents are designed to bring shopping assistance directly onto merchant web sites, fairly than only inside Copilot. Microsoft said customers using Brand Agents have seen a mean twofold lift in conversions compared with unassisted sessions.
Offer Highlights come to Copilot
The company also introduced Offer Highlights for Copilot. The ad format allows retailers to advertise products or offer details, corresponding to free shipping or in-store pickup, inside Copilot conversations.
Microsoft said Offer Highlights can show offer details tied to a user’s query, including free shipping or in-store pickup. The company said brands will later give you the option to spotlight a wider set of advantages based on each conversation and product search.
Offer Highlights can be found for retail use cases in English-speaking markets. Microsoft said the format will appear in ads on product detail pages in Microsoft Copilot, Edge, and Bing.
Advertisers can provide the product differentiators they wish to feature through Microsoft Merchant Center. Best Buy is among the many first firms to activate Offer Highlights.
Audience generation enters pilot
Microsoft can also be launching Audience generation in a closed pilot within the United States and Canada. The tool allows advertisers to explain a audience in a prompt, which Microsoft AI then translates into audience targeting settings.
The company said Audience generation can recommend demographics, locations, in-market signals, and custom audiences built by Copilot. Microsoft gave the instance of an advertiser describing a location-based customer group with age, income, event attendance, and shopping interests, with the system turning that prompt into targeting settings.
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