Microsoft and Bing ads

Where Microsoft ads actually appear

Microsoft Advertising is broader than the word Bing suggests. Ads serve on Bing, on Yahoo and AOL search, inside the Edge browser and Windows search, across Microsoft Start and MSN, and increasingly within AI-assisted search experiences built on the Microsoft index. That is a meaningful amount of desktop search that Google campaigns simply cannot reach.

The syndicated search partner network extends this further to a set of other sites and apps. Partner traffic can convert acceptably or badly depending on the vertical, and it is one of the first things worth measuring separately rather than accepting by default.

The audience composition follows from where those ads appear. A large share of the volume comes from desktop machines, often work machines running Edge, which pushes the audience towards office workers, older users and business purchasing. For a B2B advertiser that skew is an advantage rather than a compromise.

Importing from Google, and what the import gets wrong

The import tool is the fastest route to a working account, and there is no reason to rebuild from scratch. It brings across campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads, extensions and much of the settings in a few minutes, and it can be scheduled to keep pulling changes.

What it does not do is adapt anything. Bids arrive set for Google auctions, which are typically more competitive, so imported bids are frequently higher than they need to be. Budgets arrive sized for Google volume and will never spend. Audience settings, some bid strategies and certain ad formats do not have exact equivalents and silently land on defaults.

So the import is step one of about five. After it lands we reset budgets to realistic levels, review bids against actual Microsoft auction prices, check the search partner and syndication settings, rebuild conversion tracking properly, and turn off scheduled import for anything we have deliberately changed, because the next sync will otherwise overwrite the work.

• Import for speed, then reset budgets and bids for a smaller auction
• Check search partner settings rather than leaving the default
• Rebuild conversion tracking in UET, it does not come across working
• Pause scheduled import on campaigns you have customised

UET tags and conversion tracking

Microsoft uses the Universal Event Tracking tag, its own equivalent of the Google tag. It has to be installed and verified independently, and a common cause of poor Microsoft performance is an account bidding automatically against conversion data it is not actually receiving.

Set it up the same way you would on Google. One tag across the site, conversion goals defined for the actions that matter, values attached where revenue varies, and a check that recorded conversions reconcile with your back-end rather than just appearing on screen. Enhanced conversions are available here too and improve match rates.

UET also builds remarketing lists, which is worth knowing because it means the tag needs installing well before you plan to run retargeting. A tag installed today gives you a usable audience in weeks. A tag installed the week you want to launch retargeting gives you nothing.

The LinkedIn targeting advantage

Microsoft owns LinkedIn, and Microsoft Advertising is the only search platform where you can layer LinkedIn profile data onto search campaigns. You can target or adjust bids by company, by industry and by job function.

For B2B advertisers this is genuinely useful, because it combines two things that are normally separate. Search gives you intent, since the person typed the query. LinkedIn data gives you the professional context, so you know something about who they are. Bidding more for a search from someone in a target industry is a level of precision Google search cannot match.

Use it as a bid modifier before using it as a hard restriction. Restricting to LinkedIn-matched profiles only cuts your volume sharply, because not everyone is matched. Bidding up on the matched segment keeps the volume while shifting budget towards the audience you want.

• Layer company, industry and job function onto search campaigns
• Start with bid adjustments, not exclusions, to protect volume
• Pair with your named account list where you run account-based selling
• Report on the matched segment separately so you can see its real value

Running Microsoft as its own network

The accounts that fail here are the ones treated as a Google clone left running in the background. The auction is smaller, so it behaves differently. Less competition means lower clearing prices but also thinner data, which means automated bidding takes longer to learn and needs looser targets to start.

Match types are close to Google's but not identical in behaviour, and the search terms that arrive can be different in character. That means the negative keyword list needs building here on Microsoft's own search term data rather than copied across. Copying negatives from Google is a good starting point and a poor finishing one.

Volume expectations should be set honestly at the start. Most search advertisers find Microsoft delivers a fraction of their Google volume. The point is not to replace Google. It is that the same demand exists at a lower price, so the blended cost per acquisition across both networks improves.

Shopping, Copilot and where this is heading

Microsoft Shopping campaigns work much like Google Shopping and can be fed from the same product data, either through a direct feed or by importing your Google Merchant Center setup. Retailers usually see the same pattern as in search: lower volume, lower cost per click, comparable conversion rates.

The more interesting development is AI-assisted search. Microsoft has been placing ads inside Copilot and AI-generated answer experiences ahead of most competitors, which makes this account a practical place to learn how paid placement behaves in that environment while the volumes are still manageable.

We would not oversell that. It is early, formats are changing and the volume is small. But for an advertiser who wants to understand how paid search behaves as answer engines take a share of queries, a properly run Microsoft account is a cheap way to find out first rather than reading about it later.