While the industry was glued to Google I/O this morning and running scenarios for tomorrow's Google Marketing Live keynote, Microsoft shipped something that most advertisers haven't noticed yet. AI Max for Search — Microsoft's AI-driven expansion layer for search campaigns — opened its public pilot to all Microsoft Advertising accounts in May 2026.
If you're running any volume on Microsoft's ecosystem — Bing, Edge, Copilot.com, MSN — the mechanics of how your ads match just changed. Worth understanding before the pilot becomes the default.
what just went live
AI Max for Search expands how your existing search campaigns match to queries. Instead of ads appearing only when someone types something close to your keywords, Microsoft's AI now matches your ads to semantically similar intent across Copilot and Bing, including longer, more conversational queries that traditional keyword matching would have missed or misclassified.
A concrete example: someone asking Copilot "what's the best standing desk for back pain under $500" won't trigger on "standing desk" exact match. AI Max can route your search ad to that query if your campaign signals and product match the intent. The targeting perimeter expands without you rebuilding anything.
Early adopters are seeing roughly 5% improvement in click-through rates. That's plausible — Copilot users tend to be in more active discovery mode than standard Bing searchers, and the intent signals in longer queries are stronger. What the 5% figure doesn't tell you: whether those clicks convert at the same rate. You'll need to run that test yourself.
what changes in your keyword strategy
Practically nothing needs to change immediately — and that's the double-edged part.
AI Max works on top of your existing campaigns without requiring you to restructure. You don't have to rewrite ad groups or rebuild your keyword list. The system expands matching automatically once you're in the pilot. That convenience is also why it needs attention: your current term exclusions probably weren't built for an AI expansion system.
Microsoft has been clear that brand inclusions and brand exclusions carry over to AI Max from day one. That's a better starting position than Google's AI Max launched with on the Shopping side, where exclusion logic got messy early. Brand exclusions you've already set — your own brand terms, categories you don't serve — should hold.
The term exclusions list matters most. Queries that traditional match types would have filtered out can appear in AI Max matching. Audit your existing exclusion list and think through what conversational queries you definitely don't want to serve. A supplements brand doesn't want Copilot matching "best supplements for weight loss" if they don't sell in that category. That's the kind of semantic adjacency that AI Max opens up.
the Offer Highlights format inside Copilot
This is the genuinely new part — not just an expansion of existing mechanics.
Offer Highlights appear within the flow of a Copilot response rather than as a standalone ad unit. If someone asks Copilot to help them find a laptop with free shipping under $800, your ad can surface inside that answer with a callout that surfaces your specific offer: the free shipping detail, a current discount, a delivery window. The format is built for retail use cases in English-speaking markets, available across Copilot, Edge, and Bing.
This is different from a standard search ad appearing next to a search result. It's embedded in a conversational response, which means a standard headline-and-description ad built for query-triggered search doesn't necessarily translate. The brands that will do better here are those with clean Merchant Center feeds and accurate, specific product data — same principle that applies to Google AI Mode ads and ChatGPT product feeds. If your product titles are generic and your descriptions thin, Offer Highlights will have nothing useful to surface.
what to test before this gets bigger
You don't need to restructure anything to start. If AI Max is visible in your account, run it on one campaign — not your highest-spend line — with a 30-day observation window. Specifically, compare CPAs on AI Max-expanded impressions against your standard search impression baseline.
Watch four things: where the new queries are landing, whether your exclusions are holding, what the Offer Highlights engagement rate looks like versus standard ad units, and whether the Audience Generation tool — which lets you describe your ideal customer in plain language rather than manually assembling segments — produces audience quality you can actually use.
Microsoft committed to full search term and asset reporting from day one. That's not a small thing. It's better than you got with Google's equivalent features at launch, and it means you have the data to make a real call on whether the expansion is working.
The honest context on scale: Copilot has roughly 160 million monthly active users. That's not Bing circa 2012. A large portion of that audience is enterprise — Windows-default, Edge-default, Microsoft 365 embedded. If you're in B2B, SaaS, or any category where professional buyers make the decision, this pool is more interesting than the headline numbers suggest.
Running campaigns across both platforms and not sure where the gaps are? The free Gromerce audit gives you a clear read in three minutes.
Everyone's reading the Google Marketing Live preview. Nobody's checking their Microsoft Advertising account.
Related articles: Dynamic Search Ads End in September. Here's Why You Should Migrate Before Google Does It for You · Google Just Lost Its Search Ad Majority. Amazon Is the One Who Took It. · Shopify Opted Your Store Into ChatGPT Commerce. The 7% Fee Changes Your Margin Math.
Sources: Microsoft Advertising Blog, Search Engine Land, eMarketer, Design Rush, Real Internet Sales, May 2026
