Microsoft Advertising is preparing an open pilot of AI Max for Search campaigns in May, as the company adds more advertising, 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 help advertisers serve ads across AI-powered search surfaces, where user queries can be longer and more detailed than traditional search terms.
Advertisers must opt in to use AI Max. Microsoft said it will also add controls such as 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 will be available from the start. These reports are intended to show 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% year over year.
Microsoft said these changes require businesses to provide 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 selected 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 does not click through to a website. The tool will also compare how much of an AI response comes from a company’s content against content from competitors.
The expanded Clarity feature will also show when peer or competitor pages are cited instead of a company’s own pages. Microsoft said the tool will identify 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 in the United States. UCP-ready feeds are intended to help businesses provide structured product data that can be surfaced in Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft described open protocols as a common language for AI agents to communicate with business systems. UCP-ready feeds give merchants a structured way to send product information to AI shopping systems.
Microsoft is also 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 build 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 is also extending Copilot Checkout, which allows transactions to take place inside Copilot while keeping the merchant as the merchant of record. Microsoft said it is expanding catalogue data to more than 500,000 merchants and extending availability to Copilot’s mobile apps.
Target is among the early partners for loyalty experiences in Copilot. The retailer has enabled account linking, allowing Target Circle members to see benefits such as exclusive discounts and free shipping on the checkout page.
Microsoft is also expanding Brand Agents, its conversational shopping assistants for merchant websites. The feature, launched for Shopify merchants, is being extended to WooCommerce merchants, with support for brand and policy materials and improved reporting.
Brand Agents are designed to bring shopping assistance directly onto merchant websites, rather than only inside Copilot. Microsoft said customers using Brand Agents have seen an average 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 promote products or offer details, such as free shipping or in-store pickup, within 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 be able to highlight a wider set of benefits based on each conversation and product search.
Offer Highlights are available 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 want to feature through Microsoft Merchant Center. Best Buy is among the first companies to activate Offer Highlights.
Audience generation enters pilot
Microsoft is also launching Audience generation in a closed pilot in the United States and Canada. The tool allows advertisers to describe a target 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 example 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.
(Photo by appshunter.io)
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