All businesses aim to have qualified leads, a good return on ad spend (ROAS), and to reduce their customer acquisition cost. In the discussion of PPC, Google Ads comes up more often than not. However, many advertisers do not consider the other platform that could generate great returns with fewer competitors, and that is Microsoft Ads, previously referred to as Bing Ads.
Microsoft Ads allows businesses to advertise and market their products and services to millions of internet users using the Microsoft Search Network that includes Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo (through some selected syndication partnerships), and other search network partners. In addition, Microsoft Audience Network extends the marketing and advertising to more networks other than the search results.
One key factor of this particular network is the audience. The users of the Microsoft Network tend to be professional people, decision makers, high-income earners, and those who use desktop computers.
Cost efficiency is another factor that makes Microsoft Ads a promising choice. In comparison with Google Ads, in most industries, CPC is lower, there is less competition, and there is the possibility of greater ROI if the ads are properly optimized. Furthermore, companies that have Google Ads campaigns running can also use Microsoft Ads by importing their current campaigns.
This guide is more than just a basic guide. You’ll be able to understand how Microsoft Ads work, whether they are suitable for your business, how they differ from Google Ads, what types of campaigns should be used, how to optimize for better conversion rates, and what strategies the pros apply when using Microsoft Ads.
This guide will be useful for anyone, regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur in Toronto, an Ecommerce company, a SaaS company, or even a marketing agency that manages several clients.
What Are Microsoft Ads?
Microsoft Ads is a PPC advertisement platform provided by Microsoft. Using Microsoft Ads, companies can create advertisements that would be displayed using the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network.
In traditional advertising, where companies have to pay for their advertisements regardless of customer interaction with the ads, Microsoft Ads uses a pay-per-click format. For the most part, you only have to pay when people click on your advertisement.
There are some types of campaigns within Microsoft Ads for achieving different marketing goals, such as:
- Search Ads
- Shopping Ads
- Performance Max Campaigns
- Dynamic Search Ads
- Audience Ads
- Multimedia Ads
- App Install Ads
- Local Inventory Ads
Integration with platforms like Microsoft Clarity, Google Analytics, and Microsoft Advertising Editor can also be done by this platform to help advertisers monitor their customer’s behavior and improve conversions.
Why Did Bing Ads Become Microsoft Ads?
While most advertisers have come to call it Bing Ads, Microsoft has already renamed it to Microsoft Ads in recognition of the fact that it is more than just an advertising network for Bing Search Engine.
The old name indicates that one could only advertise their products on the Bing Search Engine. However, in fact, advertisers had the opportunity to show their advertisements on many other websites owned by Microsoft and even their partners.
Today, Microsoft Ads provides access to users across:
- Bing Search
- Yahoo Search
- AOL Search
- Microsoft Edge
- MSN
- Outlook
- Microsoft Start
- Windows experiences
- Select syndicated search partners
- Microsoft Audience Network
This new ecosystem enables advertisers to reach out to the potential customer across several touchpoints throughout their online journey from search intent to content consumption.
Microsoft Ads Business Model
First and foremost, we need to clarify the issue of the fact that Microsoft Ads operates in accordance with the PPC principle. Thus, you may set up your advertisements associated with some keywords that pertain to your products and services, and when people enter them into Microsoft search engines, then auctions occur.
It should be pointed out that, unlike the usual advertisements where you are paying only for exposure, there is a set of factors taken into consideration by Microsoft before showing the ads.
What Determines Ad Placement?
Microsoft Ads uses an auction system that considers:
- Maximum bid amount
- Ad relevance
- Expected click-through rate (CTR)
- Landing page experience
- Ad quality
- Competition for the keyword
- Use of ad assets (extensions)
That is, a small reduction in the bid price for the ad by the advertiser could mean outranking a competitor based on the relevance and the user experience.
Expert Insight: In Microsoft Ads, it does not matter how much you spend on your ads; what matters is how relevant your ad experience is.
Why Should Businesses Consider Microsoft Ads?
The very first choice for firms, as it is one of the most popular PPC platforms. But Microsoft Ads gives some special benefits that will allow it to become a useful component of your digital marketing strategy.
1. Target the Intentional Audience
The use of Microsoft Ads is to target millions of people with the help of Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Edge, MSN, and partner search sites.
These people could be:
- Professionals
- Decision-makers
- High-income individuals
- PC users
- An older generation with purchasing power
This audience can become good leads for B2B businesses and service providers.
2. Lower Competition
Microsoft Ads have fewer advertisers compared to Google Ads for the same keywords.
This often results in:
- Lower cost-per-click (CPC)
- Better ad positions
- Higher impression share
- More efficient budget utilization
For businesses entering paid search for the first time, this lower level of competition can provide a cost-effective testing ground.
3. Easy Campaign Import
Already running Google Ads? Microsoft Ads will allow you to import campaigns directly.
This includes:
- Keywords
- Ad groups
- Ads
- Budgets
- Extensions
- Conversion tracking (with some adjustments)
This feature reduces setup time and helps maintain consistency across platforms.
4. Unique LinkedIn Profile Targeting
The most outstanding characteristic of Microsoft Ads is the LinkedIn profile targeting feature. This tool enables advertisers to target specific audiences using:
- Company
- Industry
- Job function
5. Strong Desktop Market Share
Though mobile ads are all the rage nowadays, there is still much value in desktop ads when it comes to researching and making an informed decision.
Industries that often benefit include:
- Legal services
- Financial services
- Insurance
- Manufacturing
- Healthcare
- B2B software
- Commercial real estate
Who Should Use Microsoft Ads?
This advertising solution may be used by companies of any size; however, it is more efficient in those business sectors where users conduct thorough research before buying anything or inquiring about something.
1. Small Businesses
Ideal for:
- Local service providers
- Contractors
- Dental clinics
- Law firms
- Accounting firms
- Home services
Benefits include:
- Lower advertising costs
- Local targeting
- Phone call generation
- Lead form submissions
- Ecommerce Brands
Microsoft Shopping Campaigns allow retailers to showcase:
- Product images
- Prices
- Promotions
- Ratings
- Merchant information
2. SaaS Companies
The software suppliers can make use of Microsoft Ads for targeting people who are looking for solutions to their business problems.
Ideal for:
- Demo bookings
- Free trial sign-ups
- Webinar registrations
- Lead generation
3. B2B Companies
B2B organizations often benefit from Microsoft Ads because of its professional audience and LinkedIn Profile Targeting.
Examples include:
- IT services
- Managed service providers (MSPs)
- Cybersecurity firms
- Enterprise software companies
- Logistics providers
Multiple customer accounts can be managed by agencies, import Google Ads campaigns, and use Microsoft Ads to gain more coverage and efficiency without raising costs for media placements.
Types of Microsoft Ads Campaigns
If you have been around Google Ads long enough, then Microsoft Ads will seem very familiar on the surface, but the campaign types are not really carbon copies of each other. This is because each campaign type relies on a unique discovery experience that a person might go through when he or she is trying to find or purchase something, and choosing the right one or combination of campaign types has a greater impact on your performance than you probably think.
1. Search Campaigns
Text ads that are based on search campaigns come in traditional format, and they are triggered by a search that a user performs through Bing (or any of its syndication partners), matching the keywords you’ve selected. There are no pictures, no fancy effects – all there is is a headline, a description, and a URL trying to win the game of relevance.
This straightforward approach is the main reason behind search campaign success, since those looking for “emergency plumber near me” or “CRM software for small teams” know exactly what they need.
2. Search campaigns tend to perform best for:
- Lead generation businesses that live and die by form fills or phone calls
- Local services — plumbers, electricians, dentists, law firms
- B2B companies selling into longer, research-heavy buying cycles
If your business depends on someone raising their hand and saying “I need this now,” search is usually where you start.
3. Shopping Campaigns
Shopping campaigns flip the format entirely. Instead of a headline and a link, shoppers see the actual product, image, price, store name, and sometimes a promotion badge — sitting right there in the search results. There’s no ad copy to write because the product feed does the talking.
This makes Shopping a natural fit for anything with a visual, comparable product catalog:
- Ecommerce stores of pretty much any size
- Retail brands with seasonal or rotating inventory
- Consumer products people like to compare side by side
- Apparel, where photos genuinely sell the item
- Electronics, where price comparison drives the click
- Home goods and furniture, where shoppers often browse before they buy
Because the visuals and pricing do so much of the persuading upfront, Shopping campaigns often bring in more qualified clicks, people already have a rough idea of what they’re getting before they even land on your site.
4. Performance Max Campaigns
Performance Max is how Microsoft responds to “give me the best results and the algorithm will take care of the rest.” While traditional campaign optimization involves controlling placement by placement, Performance Max lets you input your objective and conversion data, after which the automation system takes care of the rest.
It’s a good match when:
- You’d rather set goals than micromanage placements
- You want reach across multiple channels without running separate campaigns for each
- Conversions are your north star metric, not clicks or impressions
The tradeoff is transparency — you’re trusting the machine with a lot of decisions you’d otherwise make yourself. For teams comfortable with that, though, it can genuinely save time while still performing well.
5. Dynamic Search Ads
Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) skip keyword lists altogether. Instead, Microsoft crawls your website and automatically generates headlines and matches them to relevant searches based on your actual page content.
This is especially helpful if your website has hundreds or even thousands of pages that keep changing frequently, big e-commerce stores, marketplaces, etc. DSA can cover all those aspects of SEO that regular search campaigns don’t and get you traffic from long-tail searches that you would not think of bidding on otherwise.
6. Audience Ads
Audience Ads can be seen anywhere within the Microsoft Audience Network, for instance, MSN and Outlook and partner sites, targeting people when they are browsing through an article or checking their emails. It’s a shift from “catching intent” to “creating it”.
These campaigns tend to work well for:
- Brand Awareness
- Remarketing
- Product discovery, introducing your offering to people who weren’t looking for it yet
Think of this whole process as the top-of-funnel counterpart to search’s bottom-of-funnel focus.
7. App Install Campaigns
As the name itself implies, these marketing strategies have one aim in mind: that of making sure that your mobile app is downloaded and ideally used once that is accomplished. Unlike other forms of marketing strategies, this type is specifically designed for driving downloads and post-download actions.
8. Multimedia Ads
Multimedia Advertisements exist on the cusp between regular search advertisements and display advertisements. Multimedia advertisements offer a way to distinguish yourself from the competition through eye-catching visuals combined with search intent, which allows a brand’s advertisement to stick out in search results filled with text. In a competitive market where all of the copy used in ad campaigns blends, a multimedia ad could make the difference.
What is the Cost of Microsoft Ads?
The answer is that there isn’t any specific price for it. The cost of your advertisements each month will vary based on your industry, level of competition, your objectives, popularity of the keywords, bidding, targeting and quality of your ads.
Unlike conventional marketing methods, Microsoft Ads does not have any minimum budget requirement each month.
Factors that Influence Your Marketing Costs
The factors that influence your costs include:
- Keyword competition
- Industry
- Geographic targeting
- Device targeting
- Audience size
- Quality Score
- Ad Rank
- Bid strategy
- Seasonal demand
- Conversion goals
For instance, the cost for a local plumbing company in Toronto could be different from that for a SaaS provider operating nationwide or a law firm focusing on legal terms.
Cost Per Click (CPC): Pricing Model Overview
The CPC model is the most frequently used pricing system where you pay whenever there is a click on your advertisement.
CPC rate differs greatly depending on the industry. Rather than focusing on industry averages, evaluate CPC in relation to the revenue generated from each conversion.
For example,
Paying $12 per click may seem expensive; however, if one click out of ten results in a customer worth $5,000, the campaign will be profitable indeed.
Alternatively, paying a penny per click does not necessarily make it a bargain, considering that these visits do not tend to convert.
What really counts is CPA and ROAS.?
Expert’s Point of View: Advertisers tend to get obsessed with reducing CPCs. Sometimes the business should have a bit higher CPCs that bring more qualified customers.
Suggested Starting Budgets
Businesses frequently ask how much they should invest when launching Microsoft Ads. While there’s no universal answer, the following ranges provide a practical starting point for testing and optimization:
| Business Type | Suggested Monthly Test Budget | Expected ROI |
| Local business | $500–$1,500 | 3x – 5x |
| Small ecommerce store | $1,500–$5,000 | 4x – 6x |
| B2B company | $2,000–$8,000 | Varies by Lead Value |
| SaaS business | $3,000–$15,000 | LTV focused |
| Enterprise brand | $10,000+ | High Scale |
| Government/Non-Profit | $250 – $1,000 | Awareness focus |
The goal during the first 30–60 days isn’t to maximize volume—it’s to collect reliable performance data that informs future optimization.
Budget Planning Strategy
Instead of “how much should I invest?,” consider these four questions:
1. What is my goal?
Some examples are:
- Leads generation
- Website sales
- Brand awareness
- Phone calls
- Appointment bookings
- Demo requests
If you are without a goal, it will be hard to measure the success of your campaign.
2. What is my estimated conversion rate?
What percentage of people who visit your website can convert?
Example:
- 500 visits
- 5% conversion rate
- 25 conversions
3. What is my estimated close rate?
If you manage to close 20% of leads:
- 25 leads
- 5 customers
4. Calculate your customer value.
Assuming:
- Value of average sale = $2,000
- 5 customers = $10,000 of revenue
Now compare your ad budget to the total revenue.
Step To Create a Microsoft Ads Account
Setting up a Microsoft Ads account doesn’t take long, you could technically have one running in fifteen minutes. But “fast” and “set up well” aren’t the same thing. A lot of the account issues people run into months down the line (wasted spend, targeting the wrong region, no idea which ads actually drove sales) can be traced right back to shortcuts taken in these first few steps. Slowing down here saves you the headache later.
Step 1: Create Your Account
First, register using a Microsoft account just like you would for an Outlook account or an Xbox account if you have those already. Next, you will need to provide your business information, billing information, and select a payment method.
Not rocket science, of course, but you may want to double check on what is entered, since this information will be used later for billing and reporting purposes and correcting it once it’s wrong is far harder than doing it right in the beginning.
Step 2: Identify Campaign Objectives
Before changing any campaign settings, identify your objectives. Common objectives include:
- Website traffic
- Lead generation
- Online purchases
- Phone calls
- Store visits
It’s not just about checking boxes off. What your goal is will affect nearly everything else: campaign architecture, bidding strategy, conversion tracking, etc. If you’re trying to get leads through phone calls, that’s a whole lot different from getting online purchases.
Step 3: Configure Geographic Targeting
However, while it may seem simple enough to aim at “Canada” or “the US,” this is, for the most part, a waste of money for companies. Instead, narrow your targeting to the area you actually serve.
- Toronto
- Greater Toronto Area (GTA)
- Mississauga
- Vaughan
- Markham
- Brampton
- Richmond Hill
Starting tight isn’t a permanent limitation, though. Once you’ve got a few weeks or months of performance data, you can expand into neighboring areas that are showing promise or pull back from ones that aren’t converting. Businesses with genuinely national or international reach can obviously widen their targeting from the start; the point is to match your radius to your actual service area, not to your ambitions.
Step 4: Install Conversion Tracking
This is where people fail most frequently, and also where it hits their wallets the hardest. Before even beginning your first campaign, you should ensure you have conversion tracking set up so you can measure the results that are actually meaningful to your business, such as:
- Contact form submissions
- Phone calls
- Purchases
- Quote requests
- Newsletter sign-ups
- Demo bookings
Running advertising without using conversion tracking is a little bit like driving a car without a dashboard display. You will reach your destination, but you won’t know your speed, how much fuel you have left, or if anything is going wrong with your car. Running an ad campaign that you think is “doing okay” based on the number of clicks, while in reality the money you spent is just being used for traffic.
Keyword Research for Microsoft Ads
Every PPC campaign that actually performs well was built on solid keyword research first — not clever ad copy, not a generous budget, not even smart bidding. Get the keywords wrong, and no amount of optimization elsewhere will fully make up for it.
The instinct a lot of advertisers have is to chase the biggest volume terms they can find. More searches means more opportunity, right? Not necessarily. “High volume” normally just indicates high competition and many individuals who have no intention of making any purchases at all. It is always more beneficial for you to focus your attention on keywords that indicate true buying intent even though the keyword volumes may seem small. Ten keywords from someone prepared to hire you will trump a thousand general keywords.
Types of Search Intent
Not all searches are created equal, and understanding the difference is what separates keyword lists that convert from ones that just generate clicks.
| Intent | Example Search |
| Informational | What is Microsoft Ads? |
| Navigational | Microsoft Ads login |
| Commercial Investigation | Microsoft Ads vs Google Ads |
| Transactional | Hire Microsoft Ads agency Toronto |
Informational searches and navigational searches are more relevant for purposes of content marketing and brand awareness; very rarely will they be a conversion point. If somebody uses Google to search for “what is Microsoft Ads,” he or she is still far from being a conversion-ready prospect.
Transactional and commercial investigation keywords, on the other hand, tend to deliver the strongest conversion potential. These are the people actively comparing options or already looking to hire someone. That’s exactly where your ad spend should be concentrated.
1. Build Keyword Clusters
One of the most common mistakes in account structure is dumping a long, loosely related list of keywords into a single ad group and calling it a campaign. It technically runs, but it rarely performs well, because the ad copy ends up generic enough to sort of match everything — which means it doesn’t really speak to anything.
Campaign: Microsoft Ads Management
Ad Group 1
- Microsoft Ads agency
- Microsoft Ads services
- Microsoft Ads experts
Ad Group 2
- Bing Ads management
- Bing Ads consultant
- Bing PPC agency
Despite the fact that these two ad groups are within the same campaign and they are very much connected, the distinction between them lies on the actual language used.
Such a structure will not only make your ads highly relevant for the search performed and therefore increase click through rate and Quality Score but will also give you the freedom to write the ad copy according to what has been typed.
2. Balance Keyword Types
It would be rare to see a well-balanced campaign focusing on just one type of keyword. Usually, some of the best campaigns incorporate:
- Brand keywords — people already searching for you by name
- Commercial keywords — broader terms tied to buying intent, even before a brand preference forms
- Long-tail keywords — longer, more specific phrases that convert well precisely because they’re so specific
- Competitor keywords — used carefully, and only where appropriate and compliant with platform policies
- Local keywords — geographically tied terms that match your actual service area
- High-intent service keywords — phrases that signal someone is ready to take action now
Understanding Keyword Match Types
Match types are one of those settings that look simple on the surface but quietly control how much of your budget gets spent well versus wasted. In other words, it dictates the extent of compatibility that must exist between the user’s search and the keyword you have used for your ad to even qualify for display. Fail at this, and it could mean that you are completely off the radar where you should be visible or clicking on irrelevant keywords.
1. Broad Match
A broad-matching campaign casts the widest net. Instead of requiring an exact or near-exact match, it lets your ad show for searches. Microsoft’s algorithm considers what is related to your keyword, even if the wording is quite different from what you actually entered.
Advantages
A larger audience, simply because more searches qualify
Greater discovery, picking up queries you might never have thought to add yourself
AI-driven expansion, where the platform’s own matching logic finds relevant searches on your behalf
Potential drawback
Control over the relevance of search is lower because it is the system that makes the decision rather than you, and therefore some of the traffic that will be attracted by the system may not be very relevant to your business
Broad match works perfectly when you use strong negative keywords and appropriate bidding to limit the search, but in cases where discovery is more important than accuracy. Otherwise, it is the quickest way to spend the budget on irrelevant searches.
2. Phrase Match
Phrase match sits in the middle ground. Your keyword has to appear in the search query, but Microsoft allows extra words before or after it. So if your keyword is “Microsoft Ads agency,” a search for “best Microsoft Ads agency in Toronto” could still trigger your ad, while something with your keyword’s meaning phrased entirely differently likely wouldn’t.
This makes phrase match a genuinely useful middle setting, you get more reach than exact match without giving up as much control as broad match does. For a lot of advertisers, phrase match ends up being the workhorse of the account: broad enough to catch natural variations in how people search, tight enough that the traffic still makes sense.
3. Exact Match
Exact match is the tightest setting available. Ads only show searches that closely match the keyword’s actual intent not necessarily character-for-character anymore (Microsoft does account for close variants, plurals, and reordered words), but the underlying meaning has to line up closely.
Advantages
- Higher relevance, since you’re only showing up for searches that genuinely match what you’re offering
- Better conversion potential, because the people seeing your ad were searching for almost exactly this
- Improved budget efficiency, with less money going toward clicks that were never going to convert
Why Do Negative Keywords Matter?
If keyword research is about deciding who you want your ads to show up for, negative keywords are about deciding who you don’t. It’s an easy piece of account management to overlook, but it’s often the single fastest way to stop bleeding budget on clicks that were never going to turn into business.
Here’s the thing about match types, even the tighter ones, they’re not perfect.
- Microsoft’s algorithms are matching intent, not reading minds, so your ads will inevitably show up for searches that are related in wording but completely wrong in purpose.
- Negative keywords are how you close those gaps. They tell the platform, explicitly, “don’t show my ad for this,” which keeps your spend focused on people who actually have a shot at becoming customers.
Take a PPC agency, for example. A handful of negative keywords worth adding right from the start might include:
- Free
- Jobs
- Careers
- Salary
- Course
- Tutorial
Think about the searches these words tend to show up in. “PPC agency jobs” is someone looking for employment, not a service provider. “Free PPC course PDF” is someone trying to learn the skill themselves, not hire it out.
None of these searchers are your customer, but without negatives blocking them, your ad could easily show up anyway and if it’s compelling enough, you might even pay for the click, only to have that visitor bounce the second they realize your site isn’t a job board or a free tutorial.
Multiply that across weeks and months of campaign spend, and it adds up to a real dent in your budget for zero return.
The good news is you don’t need to guess at every negative keyword upfront. The Search Terms Report does everything for you. You see the real search queries that triggered your ads, rather than the keyword that you’ve been using to advertise yourself.
The regular review of the Search Terms Report is the easiest way to prevent any irrelevant traffic, and what’s more important, you can discover many terms that you wouldn’t think of blocking beforehand. It could be the name of the competitor, some slang term, or something else completely unrelated to the use case you’ve targeted your ad on.
Think about negative keyword management as an ongoing process, rather than one-time configuration. Just a short visit to the Search Terms Report each week or two is enough to keep your account in good shape and make sure that all your budget is used on targeting only the relevant audience.
Choosing the Right Bidding Strategy
Bidding strategy is one of those decisions people either overthink or don’t think about at all. Microsoft Ads gives you several options, and the right one really does depend on where your campaign is in its life, a brand-new account with zero conversion history needs a different approach than one that’s been running steadily for a year. Picking a strategy that matches your campaign’s actual maturity, rather than jumping straight to full automation, tends to save a lot of wasted spend along the way.
1. Manual CPC
With Manual CPC, you’re setting the bid for each keyword yourself. No algorithm adjusting things behind the scenes — just you, deciding what a click is worth.
Best for
- Experienced advertisers who already have a strong sense of what each keyword should be worth
- Situations where tight budget control matters more than convenience
- Campaigns which require strict monitoring while you are figuring things out
This method is more labor-intensive for sure, but this is its main advantage because if you have only recently launched a campaign and not much data to rely on an algorithm, it allows you to monitor your spending more strictly while learning new patterns.
2. Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (ECPC)
ECPC uses your manual bids as a starting point, but allows Microsoft to adjust them depending on the probability of conversion of a certain click. It can be viewed as manual bidding with some help added to it.
This makes ECPC a natural stepping stone for advertisers who aren’t ready to hand over full control to automation, but want a taste of what smarter bidding can do. It’s a comfortable middle point on the way toward more automated strategies.
3. Maximize Clicks
Maximize Clicks does exactly what it sounds like — it automatically sets bids to generate as many clicks as possible within your budget, without factoring in conversions at all.
This is best used when traffic volume itself is the goal, rather than a specific action once people land on your site. It may be the case in the beginning when you will aim to build data and presence rather than optimizing the conversion rate, or in campaigns where traffic (such as traffic to the content) itself is the objective.
4. Maximize Conversions
Maximize Conversions passes the control of your campaign to machine learning, and it manages real-time to go after the best possible conversions.
The catch is that this strategy needs something to learn from. It becomes most effective once your account has built up a reasonable amount of conversion data — without that history, the algorithm is essentially guessing, and results can be inconsistent. If you’re just starting out, it’s often worth running a simpler strategy first and switching to Maximize Conversions once there’s real data behind it.
5. Target CPA
Rather than just chasing conversions broadly, it’s chasing conversions at a price you’re comfortable paying.
This one is best suited to mature campaigns with a consistent performance history. You need enough historical data for the algorithm to understand what a realistic CPA actually looks like for your account, set the target too aggressively without that grounding, and the strategy can struggle to spend your budget at all.
6. Target ROAS
Target ROAS shifts the focus from cost to revenue, aiming to maximize the money coming in while keeping return on ad spend at a level you’ve defined.
It’s particularly useful for ecommerce businesses, where revenue tracking tends to be more reliable and granular than it is for lead-gen businesses trying to estimate the value of a phone call or form fill. If you can tie actual purchase values back to your campaigns with confidence, Target ROAS lets you optimize for profitability directly, rather than just for volume of conversions.
Wrapping It Up
Microsoft Ads was formerly known as Bing Ads but is now a powerful online advertising network where organizations have an excellent chance of reaching intent-driven audiences through Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network. Despite the low number of searches compared to Google Ads, the lower competition, cost-effective cost per click rate, advanced targeting options, and other features like LinkedIn Profile Targeting make Microsoft Ads one of the best choices for businesses to boost their paid search campaigns.
The process of creating successful ads should go beyond simply starting the campaign. A comprehensive advertising strategy is a combination of several elements, including your company’s goals, knowledge of the target audience, and data-driven optimizations of every aspect, ranging from keyword research and bidding strategy to ad copywriting and landing page optimization.
For most companies, Microsoft Ads might be effective only as a part of a larger digital marketing effort. The combination of campaigns launched on both Microsoft Ads and Google Ads platforms will help to increase your exposure and explore additional sources of leads.
As a small local business in Toronto, an emerging eCommerce company, a B2B company, or a marketing agency handling different accounts for different clients, Microsoft Ads offers you the ability to attract qualified traffic, create leads, and make conversions if used properly.
If you are thinking about using Microsoft Ads but are not sure how to go about it, you should consider getting professional assistance from experts in PPC management in planning your campaigns, researching keywords, tracking conversions, optimizing campaigns, and providing performance reports.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What Are Microsoft Ads?
Microsoft Ads is the company’s pay-per-click ad platform. It enables businesses to create advertisements not only for Bing but also for a whole web of Microsoft-owned and partner websites such as Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Edge, MSN, Outlook and many others. That is why, although the term “Bing Ads” is used rather traditionally, the service covers more ground now than a mere search engine.
2. Is Bing Ads the Same as Microsoft Ads?
Yes, they are the same platform. Although, it is not accidental at all since the platform has truly grown beyond Bing and become something more. If you built campaigns under the old Bing Ads name, they’re still sitting right there in your Microsoft Ads account — nothing was lost in the switch.
3. How Does Microsoft Ads Work?
If you have already worked with Google Ads in the past, you will find everything about this method familiar to you. In essence, this is a PPC system based on an auction where advertisers place bids for keywords, and the ads that appear when the corresponding term is used in a search query by a user are chosen by Microsoft based on both bid size and ad relevancy/CTR prediction.
4. Is Microsoft Ads Better Than Google Ads?
It’s more about fit than one being objectively superior. Google Ads has the bigger audience and higher search volume, so if sheer scale is what you need, it’s hard to beat. Microsoft Ads, on the other hand, tends to have less competition, often comes with a lower cost-per-click as a result, and offers targeting options you simply won’t find on Google — LinkedIn Profile Targeting being the standout example.
5. How Much Does Microsoft Ads Cost?
There’s no set price tag. You decide your own daily or monthly budget, and what you actually end up spending depends on a handful of moving parts — how competitive your keywords are, which bidding strategy you’re using, how tightly you’ve defined your audience, your industry, and what you’re actually trying to achieve with the campaign. Two businesses in different industries could set identical budgets and walk away with completely different results.
6. Is There a Minimum Budget for Microsoft Ads?
No minimum spend is required, so businesses of any size can get started. That said, it’s worth giving your campaign enough budget to actually gather some data before you start making changes. Pulling the plug — or drastically tweaking bids and targeting — after only a handful of clicks usually means you’re reacting to noise rather than an actual trend.
7. What Businesses Benefit Most from Microsoft Ads?
It tends to perform particularly well for:
- Local service businesses
- B2B companies
- SaaS providers
- Ecommerce stores
- Healthcare
- Financial services
- Home services
- Marketing agencies
8. Would I Be Able To Transfer My Google Ads Campaign to Microsoft Ads?
Yes, it is something you probably don’t know about the platform. You can migrate your Google Ads campaigns to Microsoft Ads and have everything transferred with it – all your keywords, ad groups, ads, budget and even settings. It will not be identical every time, but it still saves you a lot of time when creating campaigns and having to maintain a presence in two places at once.
9. What Types of Campaigns Are Available to Me on Microsoft Ads?
There are a variety of different campaigns that you can run on the platform, including:
- Search Campaigns
- Shopping Campaigns
- Performance Max Campaigns
- Dynamic Search Ads
- Audience Ads
- Multimedia Ads
- App Install Campaigns
- Local Inventory Ads
Which one makes sense for you comes down to your business model and what you’re actually trying to accomplish — an ecommerce store chasing sales needs a very different setup than a SaaS company chasing demo bookings.
10. What Is LinkedIn Profile Targeting in Microsoft Ads?
This is one of Microsoft Ads’ genuinely unique features. Because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, advertisers can layer professional attributes: company, industry, job function, on top of their regular targeting. In practice, that means you can narrow your audience down to, say, marketing directors at mid-sized companies in a specific industry, which is a level of B2B precision most other ad platforms simply can’t offer. For B2B marketing and lead generation in particular, it’s often the single biggest reason to give Microsoft Ads a serious look.
