Paid Search Updates – July 2025

We test and experiment with ways of working so that we can accurately recommend next steps to our clients, and as a Google Premier Partner, we know our stuff. Here’s a summary of what’s changing in Paid Search and how this could affect your campaigns.

Google’s new strategy aims to drive new subscriptions and optimise follow-on views, which is when people enter your YouTube channel and engage in more of your content after seeing your ad. You can do this through selecting the ‘YouTube engagements’ campaign goal, where the optimisation works to connect your channel to viewers who are most likely to watch your content.

• The first click isn’t the main focus – it’s about deeper engagement, which is perfect for storytelling brands or multi-video strategies. 
• It gives you more awareness of who is accessing your content, meaning you can allocate spend towards audiences and creatives that help to drive these meaningful follow-up views. 
• Your first video should serve as a hook, so thinking about video sequences is crucial to incentivise viewers to see further content from you. 
• This new strategy serves as a mid-funnel metric, making it easier for marketers to link awareness with action.

The latest updates look to bring smarter reporting, more flexible campaign controls, and streamlined cross-platform tools.

Microsoft has restructured the Reporting homepage with a new Custom Report Builder, which means you can access key metrics and recommended templates a lot quicker. There’s more control over customisation, with added filters for reporting, breakdowns and scheduling, giving marketers more flexibility in their analysis. 

You can now tailor your reporting to align with your KPIs across different client/campaigns, and this frees up time for more strategic thinking and clearer communication of the value you’re providing to different accounts. Trends can be spotted quicker, performance variables can be tested, and there’s more agility to pivot your strategy fast if it’s not going to plan.

Highest Ad Rank now wins, it’s not just default Performance Max Priority when overlapping with standard shopping campaigns. This gives more flexibility and control in mixed-campaign accounts.

Want to test a niche Standard Shopping campaign alongside a broader PMax one? Now you can, without one campaign bulldozing the other. You can now gain more granular control over your budget and allocate spend with intent – not just set it and hope Performance Max doesn’t hog it all. You can segment SKUs between Standard and PMax to prioritise where performance matters most, which is great for managing stock, testing new lines, or promoting high margin products.

Now, you can bring the first image from Google or Meta ads into Microsoft audience ads as native creatives. There is also going to be a smart import issue detection with quick-fix recommendations for faster campaign troubleshooting, which means less manual work, faster cross-platform scaling, and more consistent brand performance. 

This will be ideal for peak periods or launches to get Microsoft Ads live quicker with assets you’re already using, whilst also creating a seamless user journey with consistent branding across all platforms. Having unified messaging and faster deployment improves brand recall and may boost performance across platforms when campaigns are running in sync.

The Microsoft Channel app on Shopify now supports more markets. Merchants can connect Microsoft Ads directly from Shopify, sync product catalogs to Bing/MSN Shopping, and launch and manage Performance Max campaigns natively.

This means Shopify can expand without leaving the store interface, and product updates, inventory syncing, and campaign tweaks are all in one place, reducing errors and improving ad relevance and performance. 

Overall, this closes the gap between Google Merchant Centre and Bing, especially for direct-to-consumer brands who previously ignored Microsoft due to it’s complexity. This diversifying traffic between the two gives brands more control and less dependence on rising CPAs in saturated channels.