Microsoft Advertising Debuts Product Explorer Tool
▼ Summary
– Microsoft Advertising launched Product Explorer, a Merchant Center feature providing a searchable view of product catalogs to show serving, issue, and performance status.
– The tool is currently available to U.S. advertisers with fewer than 100,000 SKUs.
– Product Explorer allows filtering by feed attributes like title and brand, and performance metrics like impressions and clicks, with export capability.
– It connects to Recommended Actions to offer guidance on resolving feed issues and improving product eligibility.
– The feature consolidates diagnostics, feed management, and campaign reports into one interface, aiming to improve efficiency for feed audits and optimization.
Microsoft Advertising has quietly rolled out a new Merchant Center feature called Product Explorer, giving advertisers a sharper view of product status and performance. The tool offers a searchable, filterable look at product catalogs so users can quickly pinpoint which items are live, which have problems, and which are driving results. For now, Product Explorer is available to U.S. advertisers managing fewer than 100,000 SKUs.
The announcement came from Microsoft Advertising Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins via LinkedIn. She explained that the tool was built directly in response to advertiser feedback about feed management and product visibility. Hopkins shared with Search Engine Journal:
> “We heard industry feedback that it was difficult to keep tabs on and manage feeds in Microsoft. With Product Explorer, you can easily search for and understand which products are rejected, performing, and which ones need optimization. This means less time manually hunting through reports, and more time making meaningful changes to your feed to ensure you’re reaching your desired outcomes.”
The new feature helps advertisers identify products that are serving, rejected, or limited by feed issues. It also integrates with Microsoft’s Recommended Actions functionality, offering guidance on how to resolve problems and improve product eligibility.
Search, Filter, and Export Product Data
Product Explorer lets advertisers filter across both feed attributes and performance metrics. Feed attributes you can filter by include Title, Product ID, Brand, GTIN, Product Type, and Custom Labels, among others. Performance filters cover Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, Spend, CTR, and Conversion Rate.
Advertisers can combine these two types of filters. For example, they can isolate products with low impressions within a specific category or review performance across custom label groups. Filtered product lists are exportable for offline analysis.
Hopkins highlighted one practical use case: identifying products that are not serving. Advertisers can quickly find items with little or no visibility and investigate the root cause. The tool may also help evaluate feed taxonomy decisions, such as how product types, categories, and custom labels are performing. This makes it easier to review how those classifications influence campaign organization.
Why This Matters for Advertisers
Product feeds are a cornerstone of Shopping campaign performance. Feed quality directly affects visibility, query matching, and overall results. Historically, troubleshooting feed issues required jumping between Merchant Center diagnostics, feed management tools, and campaign reports. Product Explorer consolidates much of that information into one place.
For advertisers with large catalogs, the biggest gain may be efficiency. The tool simplifies identifying rejected products and spotting items that are not generating impressions or conversions. That visibility helps teams prioritize feed updates and optimization efforts. The addition of product-level performance filters may also reveal trends that would otherwise stay hidden in campaign-level reporting.
What Comes Next
Product Explorer addresses a long-standing challenge for Microsoft advertisers: understanding feed health and product performance often demanded multiple reports and workflows. This update brings those insights together in a single interface.
The initial rollout is limited to U. S. advertisers with fewer than 100,000 SKUs. Microsoft says it is actively collecting feedback as it considers future improvements and expansion. For ecommerce advertisers, Product Explorer offers a more direct way to monitor feed health and product performance, potentially making routine feed audits faster and easier to manage.
(Source: Search Engine Journal)
