What a Bing Ads agency should do: when Microsoft Ads pays, what breaks on a Google import, LinkedIn targeting, budgets and reporting on qualified leads.
Three years of care have gone into the Google Ads account. Keywords are tidy, negatives are up to date, and the cost per lead has stopped falling no matter what anyone tries. Meanwhile, a fair share of the people the business wants to reach are sitting at company laptops where Bing is the default search engine, and nobody has shown them an ad.
That second engine is Microsoft Advertising, still called Bing Ads by most people who search for it. For a lot of UK accounts it is the cheapest extra reach available, because the campaigns can be copied across from Google in an afternoon and the audience leans towards the desktop, work-hours buyers that B2B firms want. It is also smaller, and it has its own quirks, so it pays to set it up as a channel in its own right rather than a copy that nobody checks.
This piece covers when Microsoft Ads is worth running, what breaks when you import from Google, how to set bids and budgets, the LinkedIn targeting that makes it interesting for B2B, and what a Microsoft Ads agency should report. It is part of the work our search advertising service does alongside Google Ads.
When Microsoft Ads earns a place in the plan
- Microsoft Ads tends to pay when the buyer is at a work desktop, the deal is B2B or the catalogue is already running in Google Shopping, and it rarely needs more than 10% to 20% of the Google budget to test properly.
- The Google import gets the structure across, but conversion tracking, audiences and budgets need setting up again on the Microsoft side, and a scheduled re-import can quietly undo local changes.
- Clear Click runs Microsoft Ads as part of one search programme with Google and reports both engines on qualified leads from the CRM.
Who actually sees Microsoft Ads?
Microsoft Advertising serves ads on Bing and on the sites that take Bing's ads, such as Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, plus Microsoft's own properties: the Edge browser, the Windows search box, MSN and Copilot. One account reaches all of them.
In plain English, the audience is everyone who searches without going to Google first. A lot of those people are at work. Windows machines ship with Edge and Bing as the defaults, and plenty of company IT teams leave them that way, so search volume on Microsoft skews towards desktop and office hours. For a firm selling to finance directors or operations managers, that is close to the ideal searcher.
The names are a small story of their own. "microsoft ads" and "microsoft advertising" are searched thousands of times a month in the UK, but nearly all of that is people trying to log in. The buyers looking for help use the older name.
1,300 searches a month: UK searches for "bing ads agency", against 720 for "microsoft ads agency", so buyers still reach for the old name when they want help.
Source: SEMrush, UK database, November 2026.
When is Microsoft Ads worth running?
The way we see it, three kinds of account get the most from Microsoft, and they overlap.
B2B with a defined buyer. If the people you sell to have a job title, work at a company of a certain size and do their research at a desk, Microsoft is where some of them search. The LinkedIn profile targeting covered below makes this the strongest case.
Older and desktop-heavy audiences. Professional services, financial products and higher-value consumer purchases often have buyers who are less likely to start on a phone. These accounts can pick up conversions on Microsoft that Google would charge more for.
Ecommerce already running Shopping on Google. Microsoft has its own Merchant Center and can pull a product feed from Google Merchant Center, so a retailer with a clean feed can have Shopping campaigns live quickly. A feed that struggles on Google will struggle here too, which is why our piece on how B2B paid search works starts with the commercial model before any platform.
Clicks on Microsoft are often cheaper than the same keyword on Google, because fewer advertisers are bidding. Volume is lower too. That trade is the whole argument for the channel: smaller, cheaper, and frequently higher intent per click.
When it is not worth the time
Microsoft Ads is not for every account, and we would rather say so up front. If the Google account is not yet profitable, adding a second engine copies the same problems into a smaller channel and makes them harder to see. Fix the Google account first; the Microsoft one will be better for it.
It is also hard to justify when Google spend is under about £2,000 a month and impression share on the core terms is still low, because the next pound on Google is usually better value. Very mobile-first consumer products and tiny local service areas tend to find the volume too thin. Everything else is worth a properly set-up test.
What breaks when you import from Google Ads?
Microsoft's import tool will copy campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads, negatives and most assets from a Google Ads account, and it can repeat the import on a schedule. It is a good starting point. It is not a finished account, and five things need attention straight away.
Conversion tracking does not come across
Google's tags and conversion actions stay in Google. Microsoft needs its own Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag on the site and its own conversion goals, ideally the same events you count in Google so the two are comparable. Until that is done, automated bidding has nothing to learn from.
Audiences start from zero
Remarketing lists built in Google do not transfer. The UET tag builds Microsoft's own lists from the day it goes live, and customer match uploads have to be done again. Expect a few weeks before remarketing layers are big enough to use.
Budgets arrive at Google size
The import copies daily budgets as they are. A campaign that spends £150 a day on Google might have £20 a day of real demand on Microsoft, so the budget sits unspent and the reporting looks odd. We set Microsoft budgets from its own search volume, not from Google's.
Scheduled re-imports overwrite local changes
This one catches people out. If the import runs weekly and someone has added Microsoft-only negatives, bid adjustments or LinkedIn targeting, the next import can reset them. Either turn scheduled imports off once the account is live, or set the import options so they only bring across new items.
Settings that need a second look
Location targeting, ad schedules, search partner settings and bid strategy all come across, but they don't always behave the same way. Microsoft's partner network is a separate setting worth checking against your own conversion data, and a bid strategy that works on Google may need a manual or enhanced period first while Microsoft builds conversion history.
How should bids and budgets work on Microsoft?
Start small and let the data decide. As a worked example, take a UK B2B software firm spending £8,000 a month on Google Ads at an average of £9 a click, about 890 clicks. Its Google campaigns are near their impression share ceiling on the core terms, so more Google budget mostly buys worse clicks.
In that example, we would put £1,200 a month into Microsoft, 15% of the Google figure. If clicks average £6, that buys 200 clicks. At the same 4% lead rate as Google, it is eight extra leads a month at £150 each, against roughly £225 a lead for the next marginal pound on Google. Those are illustrative figures, not a forecast, but they show why the test is worth running.
Three things make that test fair. Give it eight to twelve weeks, because lower volume means slower learning. Judge it on qualified leads from the CRM, not platform conversions, so the two engines are measured the same way. And keep bidding manual or enhanced until Microsoft has at least a few dozen conversions a month to work with, then move to automated bidding.
Prices only matter in context, and our guide to what a PPC agency costs in the UK covers how management fees scale with spend. For most accounts, Microsoft adds a modest amount of work to an existing Google retainer rather than a second full fee.
How does LinkedIn targeting work in Microsoft Ads?
Because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, Microsoft Advertising can use LinkedIn profile data in its search campaigns. You can target or adjust bids by company, industry and job function. Google has nothing quite like it on search.
What that means in practice: someone at one of your target accounts searches for "contract management software", and you can bid more for that person than for a student researching the same phrase. Or you can show ads only to people in finance and operations roles. You still pay for search intent, but you choose whose intent you pay most for.
We usually start with bid adjustments rather than strict targeting. Restricting a search campaign to a job function can shrink an already modest audience to almost nothing, whereas raising bids for the right companies and roles keeps the volume and moves the spend towards them. It sits well alongside LinkedIn Ads for B2B, because the same account lists can drive both.
What about Copilot and AI placements?
Microsoft has been placing ads inside Copilot answers and its other AI search experiences, drawn from existing search and shopping campaigns rather than a separate campaign type. What that looks like on screen, and how it shows up in reporting, has changed more than once and is still settling.
We treat it as a placement to watch rather than one to plan budget around. The practical steps are the ones that help everywhere: clear ad copy that answers the question, accurate assets, and a clean product feed for retailers. If Copilot traffic starts converting, it will show up in the CRM numbers first.
What should a Microsoft Ads agency report?
The same thing as a good Google Ads report, side by side. The first page should show qualified leads or revenue by engine, cost per qualified lead on each, and the share of total search pipeline Microsoft contributed. Click-through rate and cost per click belong further down as diagnostics.
Three Microsoft-specific checks are worth seeing each month: whether the import settings have changed anything, how LinkedIn bid adjustments are performing against the base audience, and how partner network traffic converts compared with Bing itself. A report that shows those gives you something to decide on.
Microsoft and Google work best when one team plans the keywords, the budgets and the reporting for both. See our search advertising service
Questions we get asked
What will Microsoft Ads management cost?
Microsoft Ads usually sits inside our paid media fee alongside Google, which is £1,500 a month plus VAT at its starting level, rather than as a separate retainer. Where Microsoft spend is large enough to need its own build, we price the extra time openly before work starts.
Is the Bing audience different from Google's?
It is smaller, and it leans towards desktop users searching during working hours, partly because Bing is the default engine on a lot of company laptops. That is why it tends to suit B2B firms with a defined buyer, and why it rarely needs more than 10% to 20% of the Google budget to test properly.
Is Bing Ads worth it for B2B?
Often, yes, because the audience skews to work desktops and LinkedIn profile targeting lets you bid more for the right companies and roles. Run it as a test of 10% to 20% of the Google budget for two to three months and judge it on qualified pipeline.
Can you just import Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Ads?
You can, and it is the fastest way to start. Then set up the UET tag and conversion goals, resize the budgets to Microsoft's volume, and turn off scheduled imports or limit them so they don't overwrite changes made on the Microsoft side.
Is Bing Ads management different from Google Ads management?
The skills are the same, but the account needs its own budgets, bidding period and checks. The LinkedIn targeting and the import settings are where most of the Microsoft-specific work sits.
Where we fit
We run Microsoft Ads for UK businesses as part of one search programme with Google, with a single keyword plan, shared reporting and both engines judged on the leads and revenue they bring in. It suits B2B firms with a defined buyer and retailers already running Shopping well.
We don't have a published Microsoft Ads case study yet, so the worked example above is the honest picture of how we test it. If you would like a view on whether it would pay for your account, send us a note with your current Google spend and we will tell you what we would try first.
