What Is Bing Ads (Microsoft Advertising) and How Does It Work
Many advertisers put their entire budget on Google and miss a whole network of customers. Bing Ads - officially called Microsoft Advertising - puts your ads in front of an audience Google doesn't give you, often at a lower cost per click. Well managed, it becomes a profitable growth channel; ignored, it stays a missed opportunity.
What is Bing Ads (Microsoft Advertising)?
Bing Ads, officially called Microsoft Advertising, is Microsoft's paid advertising platform. Your ads appear in Bing search results and across a wide network of partners, based on the keywords you target.
Microsoft changed the name from Bing Ads to Microsoft Advertising, but the network, the search partnerships and the bidding model remain the same system, tested for over a decade. In practice, it is a mature PPC platform, not an experiment.
A common mistake is to think “Bing is small.” In reality, the Microsoft search network powers much more than Bing.com, reaching a vast global audience through its search partners. Bing is also built into Windows, the Edge browser and the Copilot assistant, which constantly extends its reach to users you can't reach on Google.
How does bidding work on Microsoft Ads?
Microsoft Advertising runs on an auction, just like Google Ads: you bid on keywords and pay only when someone clicks your ad. Where you appear and how much you pay depend on the combination of your bid and a quality score that reflects how relevant your ad and page are to the user's search.
In practice, you define a goal, an audience and a budget, choose your keywords and write your ads, and the system decides who sees them, optimizing toward the result you want - usually conversions. The more relevant the ad and the landing page, the lower the cost per click and the better the position, which makes quality one of the most important efficiency levers.
Where do your ads appear?
Ads can appear in several places, each with its own role:
- Search network. Bing, Yahoo, AOL and DuckDuckGo - text ads that catch buying intent, where people are actively searching for a product or service.
- Microsoft Audience Network. Native ads on MSN, Outlook, Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Start, which blend into content and suit discovery and remarketing.
- Built into the ecosystem. Because Bing is built into Windows, Edge and the Copilot assistant, you also reach users you don't reach at all on Google.
You can choose to run on the search network only or to include native placements too, depending on your goal. For an online store, search is usually the backbone, and you add the native network to bring back visitors who didn't buy the first time.
Why is Bing Ads worth it for an online store?
The first reason is the different audience. Microsoft users tend to be older, wealthier and mostly on desktop - an audience with real buying power that is hard to reach through other channels. For certain categories, especially premium products or considered purchases, this profile converts very well.
The second reason is cost. Because fewer advertisers bid on Microsoft than on Google, competition is lower, and the cost per click is often lower for the same keywords. That means more clicks and conversions from the same budget. On top of that comes a unique advantage: because Microsoft owns LinkedIn, you can layer professional data such as job function, industry and company over your campaigns - a precision no other search platform offers.
What campaign types are available?
Microsoft Advertising offers several campaign types, suited to different goals:
- Search. Text ads that appear in search results - the backbone for buying intent.
- Shopping. Product ads powered by a feed through Microsoft Merchant Center, essential for eCommerce.
- Audience. Native ads on the Microsoft Audience Network, for low-cost discovery and remarketing.
- Performance Max. Automated campaigns that run across the whole network, optimized for your conversion goals.
The best accounts don't pick a single type but combine them into one strategy: search captures existing demand, Shopping shows the products, and the native network brings visitors back and builds new demand.
How do you get started with Microsoft Advertising?
The fastest way to start, if you already run Google Ads, is to import your campaigns straight from Google into Microsoft Advertising. You bring over the structure, keywords and ads in one step, then adapt them to Microsoft's specifics - because a mechanically copied import ignores the different audience and competition.
Before any optimization, tracking is essential. The UET (Universal Event Tracking) tag is Microsoft's equivalent of the conversion tag: installed correctly on your site, it measures conversions and their value and passes the data to the platform so the algorithm optimizes for real results. Without a properly configured UET, optimization is blind.
What do you optimize Bing Ads campaigns for?
It's easy to fall into the trap of chasing cheap clicks or just ROAS. But a low cost per click means nothing if the products you sell have a low margin, and ROAS ignores margin entirely: you can have a high ROAS and still lose money. That's why, in eCommerce, the right approach is profit optimization - POAS (Profit on Ad Spend).
POAS aligns your budget with the products and campaigns that bring real profit, not just revenue. Applied to Microsoft Advertising, where the cost per click is lower anyway, it amplifies your advantage: your budget goes to what is truly profitable, and Microsoft's incremental reach turns into margin, not just cheap traffic.