Microsoft Ads gives API users more visibility into PMax
Microsoft Advertising adds deeper search-to-landing-page reporting and more controls for programmatic Performance Max management.
Microsoft Advertising is expanding its API with a new Search Term Landing Page Report, campaign-level device exclusions for Performance Max and support for LinkedIn segment targeting.
The update is most relevant to agencies, software vendors and advertisers that manage Microsoft Ads programmatically. It gives those teams more data about where search traffic lands while adding another way to constrain automated Performance Max delivery.
Key Takeaways
- Microsoft Advertising has added a Search Term Landing Page Report to its API.
- Performance Max campaigns can now use campaign-level device exclusions through the API.
- The update adds more inspection and control to an ad product that otherwise relies heavily on automation.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- Search terms can now be tied more directly to landing pages
- PMax gets another campaign-level constraint
- LinkedIn targeting becomes more useful to tool builders
- Automation is pushing reporting deeper
Search terms can now be tied more directly to landing pages
The headline reporting addition is a Search Term Landing Page Report. According to Search Engine Land, the report is designed to connect the terms people searched with the pages they reached after clicking an ad.
That relationship matters because search-term performance and landing-page performance are often reviewed separately. A query may look productive at the campaign level while sending users to a page that is poorly aligned with the intent behind the search.
For teams building dashboards or scripts on top of Microsoft Advertising, the new report makes it easier to automate that diagnostic step. A workflow can flag expensive search terms that are repeatedly landing on weak or mismatched destinations without asking a campaign manager to join exports manually.
The value is therefore less about one additional report and more about making search-to-page analysis available inside repeatable tooling.
PMax gets another campaign-level constraint
Microsoft is also adding campaign-level device exclusions for Performance Max. Advertisers can exclude Computers, Smartphones or Tablets from a PMax campaign.
That is a meaningful control because Microsoft's Performance Max documentation describes the format as one that relies on Microsoft AI to match assets and targeting parameters in real time.
Automation can simplify campaign setup, but it also reduces the number of manual levers available to practitioners. Device exclusions give advertisers a way to encode a business rule when certain device environments consistently perform poorly or are inappropriate for the offer.
The feature is especially useful for agencies with client-specific constraints. A B2B advertiser with a desktop-heavy conversion path, for example, may want more control than a fully automated campaign would otherwise provide.
LinkedIn targeting becomes more useful to tool builders
The same API update adds support for LinkedIn segment targeting.
LinkedIn data is a distinctive part of Microsoft's advertising stack because it gives the company access to professional audience signals that do not have a direct equivalent inside other search-ad platforms.
For a marketer working only in the Microsoft Ads interface, that may look like another targeting option. For software vendors and agencies using the API, the significance is broader: professional audience criteria can be incorporated into automated campaign-management systems instead of being treated as a separate manual setup step.
That makes the API more useful for account structures where audience selection, reporting and campaign controls are all managed through one internal tool.
Automation is pushing reporting deeper
The broader direction is familiar across paid media. Platforms are automating bidding, targeting and creative assembly, while advertisers ask for more transparency into what those systems actually did.
ContentGrip has covered the same tension in Google's shift toward AI-led Search campaigns. Microsoft is moving in a similar direction, but this API update shows how control can be returned through reporting and exclusions rather than by reversing automation itself.
For practitioners, that changes what "control" means. It increasingly means setting guardrails, inspecting outputs and building monitoring workflows around automated campaigns.
The Search Term Landing Page Report helps explain where traffic went. Device exclusions let teams impose a hard operational rule. LinkedIn segment support gives tool builders another structured audience input.
None of those changes makes Performance Max a manual campaign type. They make it easier for technical media teams to supervise automation with more evidence and clearer boundaries.
