What Is Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads)? The Complete Guide for Advertisers in 2026

Microsoft Ads — formerly known as Bing Ads — is Microsoft's search advertising platform that puts your ads in front of users across Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and the broader Microsoft Search Network. Most advertisers dismiss it as "the platform with less traffic than Google," but that framing misses the point entirely. Microsoft Ads reaches a distinct audience — older, higher-income, more corporate — at CPCs consistently 30-60% lower than Google Ads. For B2B companies and service businesses with high average transaction values, Microsoft Ads is frequently the highest-ROI underutilized channel in their marketing stack.

This guide covers everything you need to understand about Microsoft Ads: how the platform works, who it reaches, what campaign types are available, how the auction operates, and when it makes sense to invest alongside or instead of Google Ads.

Microsoft Ads vs. Bing Ads: A Brief History

Microsoft Ads and Bing Ads are the same platform. Microsoft launched adCenter in 2006 as its first search advertising product. In 2012, the platform was rebranded to Bing Ads following the Bing search engine's growing prominence. In April 2019, Microsoft rebranded again to Microsoft Advertising (with Microsoft Ads as the shorthand used in the interface).

The rebrand wasn't cosmetic — it signaled Microsoft's intent to expand beyond just Bing search advertising to include audience advertising across MSN, Outlook, and the Microsoft Edge browser. If you have an existing Bing Ads account, your campaigns, keywords, billing, and history are all intact under the new name. Nothing changed except the branding.

The Microsoft Search Network: Every Place Your Ads Appear

When you run search campaigns in Microsoft Ads, your ads can appear across the full Microsoft Search Network:

Bing.com: Microsoft's primary search engine. The default search engine in Microsoft Edge, the default browser on Windows. Handles approximately 900 million to 1 billion searches per month in the United States alone.

Yahoo.com: Microsoft powers Yahoo's search results through a long-standing partnership. Yahoo still drives meaningful search volume, particularly among older demographics — exactly the audience profile that performs well for many advertisers on this network.

AOL.com: AOL search is powered by Bing through a similar partnership arrangement. Smaller volume but additive.

DuckDuckGo: The privacy-focused search engine uses Bing's index for many of its results. DuckDuckGo's user base is typically tech-savvy and privacy-conscious — a useful niche for certain advertiser categories.

Microsoft Edge New Tab Page: The new tab experience in Edge surfaces search results powered by Bing, creating additional inventory with minimal extra setup.

Microsoft Audience Network: Beyond search, Microsoft Ads extends to display and native ad placements across MSN.com, Outlook.com, Microsoft Start, and partner publisher sites. This network is where LinkedIn Profile Targeting is available.

The combined reach of this network is estimated at roughly 636 million unique monthly searchers globally, with particularly strong coverage in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. In the US, the Microsoft network captures approximately 9-11% of all search queries.

How the Microsoft Ads Auction Works

Microsoft Ads uses a second-price auction system similar to Google's. Every time a user performs a search query that matches one of your keywords, an auction runs in milliseconds to determine which ads appear and in what order.

Ad Rank: Your Ad Rank determines your ad's position in the results. Ad Rank = Quality Score × Maximum CPC Bid. A higher quality score can help you win higher positions with lower bids — rewarding relevance rather than just spend.

Quality Score in Microsoft Ads: Microsoft's Quality Score (scored 1-10, with 10 being best) assesses three sub-components:

• Expected Click-Through Rate: How likely is your ad to be clicked given the keyword match and position? Microsoft benchmarks this against other advertisers competing on the same keyword.
• Ad Relevance: How closely does your ad text match the searcher's intent? Keywords in ad headlines and descriptions are strong relevance signals.
• Landing Page Experience: Does your landing page match the ad's promise? Is it fast, mobile-friendly, and relevant to the keyword?

Actual CPC: Like Google, Microsoft Ads uses a second-price auction. You pay just enough to beat the competitor below you, not your full maximum bid. Actual CPC is typically lower than your max CPC.

Quality Score vs. Google: Microsoft's Quality Score operates similarly to Google's but with independent calculation. A campaign imported from Google starts without established Quality Scores and must rebuild them. This is one of the most common reasons imported campaigns initially underperform — expect 3-4 weeks for Quality Scores to stabilize after import.

The Microsoft Ads Audience: Why Demographics Make All the Difference

The single most strategically important fact about Microsoft Ads is not its volume — it's its audience composition. Understanding who uses Bing (and why) explains why certain advertisers consistently find Microsoft Ads outperforms Google Ads on a per-click ROI basis.

Age distribution: 35-64 dominant: Microsoft's search network skews significantly older than Google. Approximately 50-55% of Bing users are in the 35-64 age range, compared to a more even age distribution on Google. This matters because the 35-64 cohort controls the majority of household purchasing power, holds most executive and managerial roles, and makes most high-value business procurement decisions.

Higher household income: Bing users index above average for household income in most English-language markets. The reasons are structural: Windows is the dominant operating system in corporate environments, and Bing is the default browser on Microsoft Edge, meaning many searches happen in a professional context where the user has not bothered to switch default search engines. Professionals who are busy and not particularly invested in consumer search preferences often remain on Bing by default.

Corporate and professional context: Windows powers an estimated 72% of enterprise desktops globally. In many corporate environments, IT departments do not allow employees to change browser defaults, so knowledge workers spend their days searching on Bing. This creates an organic, structural audience of professionals — software developers, financial analysts, procurement managers, executives — that no targeting overlay can fully replicate.

Desktop-heavy traffic: Approximately 60-65% of Microsoft Search Network traffic comes from desktop devices, compared to roughly 35-40% on Google (where mobile now dominates). This has major implications for conversion rates in B2B and high-consideration categories. Desktop users tend to research more thoroughly, fill in longer forms, and engage with more complex content.

Educated and professional: Microsoft's own audience data shows Bing users are more likely to hold college or advanced degrees and to be employed in professional or managerial roles. For advertisers selling software, professional services, financial products, or premium goods, this profile represents the ideal buyer.

LinkedIn Profile Targeting: Microsoft's Exclusive B2B Advantage

This is the capability that separates Microsoft Ads from every other search advertising platform in existence. When Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion, it gained access to the world's largest professional database — and eventually integrated it into Microsoft Ads targeting.

LinkedIn Profile Targeting is available on Audience Network campaigns (display and native ads shown on MSN, Outlook, and partner sites). You can layer the following professional dimensions:

Company Industry: Target users whose LinkedIn profile lists their employer as operating in a specific industry. Options include Technology, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, Education, Government, Media, Real Estate, Transportation, and dozens more. This is ideal when your product serves specific verticals — for example, an ERP vendor targeting users in Manufacturing and Logistics.

Company Size: Define the organization size of your target audience's employer. Ranges include 1-10 employees (startups and solo operators), 11-50, 51-200, 201-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-5,000, 5,001-10,000, and 10,000+. Enterprise software vendors typically target 500+ or 1,000+. SMB-focused solutions target under 200.

Job Function: Target users by the broad functional area of their role. Options include IT, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Engineering, Human Resources, Legal, Administrative, and more. This works well when your product serves a specific department across many industries.

Job Title: The most granular targeting dimension — specific job titles from LinkedIn. You can target "Chief Financial Officer," "Director of IT," "VP of Supply Chain," "Head of Procurement," and thousands of other titles. The limitation is volume: very specific titles may result in small audience sizes that make campaign performance statistically difficult to read.

Seniority: Target by career level — Entry, Senior, Manager, Director, VP, C-Suite, Partner, Owner. For solutions requiring executive approval, filtering for Director and above ensures your awareness budget reaches decision-makers rather than individual contributors.

Named Company Targeting: For Account-Based Marketing (ABM), you can target employees of specific companies by name. Upload a list of your target accounts, and Microsoft Ads will show your Audience Network ads specifically to employees of those organizations who match your other targeting criteria. This is directly analogous to LinkedIn's Company List targeting but at a lower CPM.

No other search advertising platform — including Google Ads — offers this integration of professional profile data with paid advertising. It represents a genuine structural advantage for B2B advertisers with defined ideal customer profiles.

Campaign Types Available in Microsoft Ads

Microsoft Ads supports several campaign types, each serving different advertising objectives:

Search Campaigns: The core search advertising format. Text ads appear in Bing search results when users search for your targeted keywords. Match types (exact, phrase, broad) work similarly to Google Ads. Responsive Search Ads are the standard format, where you provide multiple headlines and descriptions and Microsoft's algorithm tests combinations to find top performers. Search campaigns are the highest-intent format — users are actively looking for what you offer when your ad appears.

Shopping Campaigns (Product Ads): Visual product listings that appear in Bing shopping results. Showing product images, names, prices, and store names, these ads require a product feed uploaded through Microsoft Merchant Center. Product Ads perform strongly for ecommerce — CPCs typically run 25-40% lower than equivalent Google Shopping ads. Feed quality is the primary performance lever.

Audience Network Campaigns: Display and native ads across Microsoft's owned-and-operated properties (MSN, Outlook, Microsoft Start) and partner publisher sites. This is where LinkedIn Profile Targeting is available. Audience campaigns work for brand awareness, retargeting, and demand generation for B2B advertisers. They support image ads, responsive display ads, and video formats.

Performance Max Campaigns: Microsoft's AI-driven campaign type that automates budget allocation across search, shopping, and audience network placements. Performance Max uses machine learning to find the best combination of placements and audiences for your conversion goals. Effective for accounts with established conversion history (25+ conversions/month minimum recommended). For new accounts or new categories, standard campaign types build the data foundation that PMax needs to perform.

Video and Connected TV Campaigns: Microsoft Ads includes video advertising capabilities through the Microsoft Audience Network and, in some markets, Connected TV placements. Less commonly used but useful for brand awareness campaigns.

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA): For larger websites, DSA campaigns automatically generate ads based on your website content, targeting searches that match your pages. Useful for capturing long-tail queries you might not have mapped to keywords explicitly.

Microsoft Merchant Center for Ecommerce

For ecommerce advertisers, Microsoft Merchant Center is the foundation. It's the equivalent of Google Merchant Center — the feed management system where you upload your product catalog for use in Shopping campaigns.

Setting up Microsoft Merchant Center:

1. Create a Business account at ads.microsoft.com
2. Navigate to Microsoft Merchant Center and create a new store
3. Verify domain ownership through a meta tag or DNS record
4. Create a product catalog and upload your feed (XML or CSV format)
5. Wait 3-5 business days for feed approval
6. Link your Merchant Center to your Microsoft Ads account and create Shopping campaigns

Feed format compatibility: Microsoft accepts the same product data specification as Google Merchant Center. If you have an optimized Google Shopping feed, it typically works in Microsoft with no changes or very minor modifications. Product title optimization, GTIN inclusion, and custom label strategy all transfer directly.

The performance implication: Identical feed quality produces lower CPCs on Microsoft Shopping compared to Google Shopping — typically 25-40% lower. The volume is lower, but the economics are often more favorable per click.

Conversion Tracking with the UET Tag

Microsoft Ads uses its own pixel — the Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag — for conversion tracking. UET is distinct from Google's conversion tracking and must be implemented separately.

UET tag implementation: Install the base UET tag on every page of your site (similar to how Google's global site tag works). Once the base tag fires, you configure specific conversion goals in Microsoft Ads — form submissions, purchases, phone calls, page visits — and the system tracks these as conversions attributable to your campaigns.

Ecommerce dynamic remarketing: For product-level remarketing, the UET tag should fire with product IDs, product prices, and event types (view, add-to-cart, purchase). This enables dynamic remarketing campaigns that show users ads featuring the specific products they viewed.

CRM integration for B2B: For B2B advertisers where the conversion is a lead (not a direct sale), import offline conversions from your CRM into Microsoft Ads. When a lead closes or advances to a sales qualified stage, that data can flow back into the platform to optimize campaigns toward higher-quality leads. Microsoft Ads supports offline conversion import from Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs through direct integrations or file upload.

UET verification: After installation, use the UET Tag Helper Chrome extension to verify the tag fires correctly on all relevant pages. Microsoft's interface also shows tag status with a "Tag active" or "Tag inactive" indicator per conversion goal.

Importing from Google Ads: The Fast Setup Path

The most common way to launch Microsoft Ads is importing from an existing Google Ads account. Microsoft's Import Tool makes this straightforward:

1. In your Microsoft Ads account, go to Import → Import from Google Ads
2. Connect your Google Ads account (OAuth authentication)
3. Select which campaigns, ad groups, or entire account to import
4. Review the import summary for any warnings or mapping issues
5. Choose whether to pause imported campaigns or activate them immediately
6. Click Import

The import pulls over: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, match types, ad copy (Responsive Search Ads map to RSAs), bid strategies, ad extensions (sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets), and audience lists. Some features don't import: Smart campaigns, Video campaigns, Performance Max (imports as a different campaign type), and certain extension types.

After import: critical optimization steps: Imported campaigns are a starting point, not a finished product. Quality Scores start at 0 and must build. Budget allocation from Google often needs adjustment for Microsoft's cost levels. Bid strategies should be validated — smart bidding takes 2-4 weeks to re-calibrate on Microsoft's data. Ad extensions should be reviewed for any that may need Microsoft-specific formatting.

The recommendation for most advertisers: start imported Microsoft Ads campaigns at 20-25% of the equivalent Google budget while Quality Scores build and performance data accumulates. After 4-6 weeks, budget decisions should be driven by actual CPA/ROAS data rather than proportional estimates.

When Microsoft Ads Makes Sense vs. Google Ads

Microsoft Ads is not a replacement for Google Ads — it's an additive channel. The decision framework:

Microsoft Ads makes strong sense when:

• You are in B2B — the audience demographics and LinkedIn targeting combination is uniquely powerful
• You sell financial services, legal services, professional services, insurance, or healthcare — categories where Bing's older, higher-income audience matches the buyer profile well
• Your Google CPCs have risen to the point where target CPA is difficult to maintain — Microsoft's lower CPCs can offset rising costs in competitive Google categories
• You are in technology or enterprise software — professional audience, corporate Bing defaults, and lower CPCs than Google for SaaS and enterprise keywords
• You sell mid-to-high ticket ecommerce products where the 35-64 audience makes up a significant share of buyers
• You want to capture the last 9-11% of search volume your Google campaigns are missing

Google Ads remains the priority when:

• Maximum volume is the primary objective and demographics are wide
• Your product is mass-market consumer goods or low-ticket items where sheer impression and click volume drives results
• Your audience is primarily under 35 or mobile-first
• You need YouTube advertising as part of the strategy
• You're early in your paid search journey and don't yet have optimized Google campaigns to import from

The practical answer for most mature advertisers: Run both. Use Google Ads as the primary volume driver with 70-80% of search budget. Add Microsoft Ads with the remaining 20-30%, starting with imported campaigns. Measure CPA and ROAS independently. Many B2B advertisers who test this allocation discover Microsoft generates leads at 25-40% lower cost than Google, prompting a rebalancing toward 35-40% Microsoft over time.

CPC Comparison: What Lower Competition Actually Means

The 30-60% CPC reduction claim deserves specifics. CPCs vary by industry, keyword competitiveness, and geographic market, but the pattern is consistent across categories:

B2B Software: Google CPCs for enterprise software keywords often run $15-40 per click. Microsoft CPCs for the same terms typically run $8-20. The reduction reflects dramatically lower advertiser competition — the same intent signal at a lower price.

Financial Services: Among the most competitive Google categories. Financial services keywords on Google can exceed $50-100 CPC. Microsoft rates for equivalent terms typically run $25-50 — meaningful savings at scale.

Legal Services: Legal has some of Google's highest CPCs ($50-150 for personal injury, mesothelioma, and similar terms). Microsoft typically delivers the same intents at $25-70.

Healthcare: Healthcare keywords on Google range from $3-25 depending on specificity. Microsoft delivers similar ranges at $2-15.

Ecommerce: Product-level shopping CPCs are lower on Microsoft, typically $0.40-1.50 versus $0.60-2.50 on Google for the same products.

The CPC gap reflects one thing: less competition. Fewer advertisers bid on Microsoft, so the second-price auction clears at lower prices. This will gradually close as more advertisers discover the channel's efficiency — which is one reason agencies experienced in Microsoft Ads encourage clients to activate now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Microsoft Ads the same as Bing Ads? Yes, exactly the same platform. Microsoft rebranded Bing Ads to Microsoft Ads (officially Microsoft Advertising) in April 2019. All existing accounts, campaigns, billing, and history carry over automatically with no action needed from advertisers.

How much does Microsoft Ads cost to get started? There is no minimum budget requirement to create an account. Practically, you need at least $300-500 per month to generate enough click volume for meaningful optimization data. Most advertisers managing standalone Microsoft campaigns operate on $500-2,000/month. Budgets below this threshold tend to accumulate data too slowly for automated bidding strategies to perform.

How does Quality Score work in Microsoft Ads vs. Google Ads? Quality Score in both platforms rates ad quality on a 1-10 scale using similar components: expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. However, they're calculated independently. A campaign with a 9/10 Quality Score on Google might start at 5/10 on Microsoft after import, simply because Microsoft has no historical click-through data on your ads yet. Quality Scores typically normalize within 3-6 weeks of active campaign operation.

Can I run Microsoft Ads without Google Ads? Technically yes, but most advertisers use both. Building campaigns from scratch on Microsoft is fully supported. The import tool exists for the majority of advertisers who already have Google campaigns as a foundation.

Does Microsoft Ads work for local businesses? Yes, though local search volume on Bing is lower than Google. Local businesses in competitive categories (legal, healthcare, home services) often find Microsoft Ads worthwhile because local CPCs are significantly lower and search intent is identical. For national and international advertisers, Microsoft's value proposition is stronger.

What's the minimum I need to know about UET tag setup? The UET tag is Microsoft's tracking pixel. It needs to be installed on every page of your site. For basic conversion tracking, add goal-level event tracking (form submissions, purchases) to specific pages. For ecommerce and dynamic remarketing, product-level event parameters should fire on product pages, cart pages, and order confirmation pages. The UET Tag Helper browser extension verifies installation.

How does Performance Max work in Microsoft Ads? Microsoft PMax functions similarly to Google PMax — automated budget allocation across search, shopping, and audience network placements using AI. It requires asset groups with images, headlines, descriptions, and optionally video. Microsoft PMax launched in 2022 and reached broader availability in 2023. Best practice is to have 25+ monthly conversions in Microsoft Ads before relying on PMax, as the algorithm needs sufficient conversion data to optimize effectively.

When should I consider outsourcing Microsoft Ads management? When the platform is generating more than $1,000/month in ad spend and you don't have dedicated in-house paid search expertise. Microsoft Ads managed by someone without platform-specific knowledge — particularly around LinkedIn targeting, post-import optimization, and Quality Score rebuilding — often runs at 60-70% of its potential efficiency. Agencies experienced in both Google and Microsoft Ads can typically improve performance 20-40% versus self-managed accounts.

Get Started with Microsoft Ads

Old Fox manages integrated Google Ads and Microsoft Ads strategies for B2B companies and ecommerce brands across North America and Latin America. As a Google Premier Partner in the Top 3% in their country with over 12 years of paid search experience and 130+ active accounts, we know what it takes to make Microsoft Ads perform alongside Google — not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate part of a multi-platform strategy that has delivered an average 4.5x ROAS across our client portfolio.

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