Microsoft Ads Adds AI Visibility Topic Insights, PMax Tests
Microsoft Advertising used its first monthly product newsletter to expand AI Visibility reporting in Clarity with Topic Insights, alongside Performance Max testing and Ad Preview Hub updates.
Key takeaways
- Microsoft Clarity's AI Visibility reporting now includes Topic Insights, grouping AI citations by subject so brands can spot coverage gaps.
- Microsoft defined three new metrics: grounding queries, citation share, and share of authority.
- Microsoft recommends comparing grounding queries against existing search terms to find new keywords, negative keywords, and landing page fixes.
- The update arrived via Microsoft Advertising's first monthly product newsletter on LinkedIn, published August 5, 2026.
- Details on the Performance Max testing and Ad Preview Hub creative review updates were teased but not fully specified in this release.
What Microsoft announced
Microsoft Advertising launched its first monthly product newsletter on LinkedIn this week, and the headline item is an expansion of AI Visibility reporting inside Microsoft Clarity called Topic Insights, according to Search Engine Journal's reporting, published August 5, 2026. The feature groups AI citations by subject rather than listing them one by one, so advertisers can see which topics AI systems associate with their brand, how often those topics surface, and where the coverage gaps sit.
This builds on AI Visibility reporting Microsoft rolled out earlier this year. The newsletter also folds in updates to Performance Max testing and the Ad Preview Hub, though the source material stops short of detailing exactly what those creative review changes involve, so treat the specifics there as unconfirmed until Microsoft publishes more.
Three metrics worth learning now
Microsoft defined three metrics that show up in the new reports, and they're worth memorizing before you open the dashboard, because they change how you'll argue for budget in the next planning meeting.
- Grounding queries: the retrieval searches AI systems run before generating an answer.
- Citation share: how frequently a domain appears as a cited source.
- Share of authority: how often one domain gets cited versus competing sources.
Why it matters to your budget
The signal here is bigger than one feature: Microsoft is treating AI citation data as an input to paid search decisions, not a side dashboard. That mirrors the broader shift covered in CMO Mag's IAB visibility measurement standards piece, and it pairs well with the tactics in the AEO playbook for AI search citations. If you run Microsoft Ads, pull the Topic Insights report this month and check whether your grounding queries overlap with search terms you're already bidding on, or whether you're leaving whole topics uncovered.
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