Microsoft Opens Performance Max Search Terms

The News

On October 28, 2026, Microsoft Advertising announced new Performance Max visibility and control updates across Bing Search, Copilot, Outlook, and partner inventory. Search term reporting and auction insights are now available, while search term landing-page reporting starts rolling out in mid-November. The affected surface is Microsoft Advertising automated campaigns, with PMax query visibility becoming a stronger operating input for optimization.

The OPTYX Analysis

This is a search ads and commerce discovery signal because Microsoft is reducing one of the biggest weaknesses in automated campaign adoption: limited query and competitor observability. The systemic mechanism is automation transparency expansion, pairing broader automated delivery with more actionable reporting, targeting, and exclusion controls. Strategically, Microsoft is positioning Performance Max as less of a black box than competing automated formats, especially for advertisers balancing Bing Search, Shopping-style product discovery, and audience inventory. The change matters because query-level evidence can now inform creative, landing page, exclusion, and budget decisions more directly.

Enterprise Impact

The exposed operator is the paid search lead, retail media buyer, analytics team, or ecommerce growth owner running Microsoft Performance Max beside Google Ads. The opportunity is query-to-landing-page governance once mid-November reporting shows how user intent maps to destinations. The vulnerability is wasted spend if automated campaigns route valuable queries to weak, mismatched, or non-commercial pages. Required next move is building a reporting workflow that reviews search terms, auction competitors, landing pages, audience exclusions, age and gender targeting, and conversion quality before holiday budgets peak.