Microsoft Advertising, formerly known as Bing ads, is a platform for advertisers to show ads on the Microsoft network. Most estimates have Microsoft Ads’, including the search network, search share only being around 11% (with Google having the majority of the rest), but with Bing being the default search engine for Microsoft products (ex. Edge browser), there is enough traffic there to make it worthwhile for advertisers to consider it to bring in incremental traffic and conversions. Typically, having a lower cost per click than Google makes it appealing, as well. But there are things one should know before setting up that first Microsoft ad campaign. There are “hidden features” that can make or break an account. Let’s start with the good…
Bing Wants To Be Google
Bing has tried for years and years and years to create a unique search engine that would one day outrank and outpace Google. They had their own ads platform to monetize it and were coming out with features to differentiate themselves. Well, somewhere along the way, they gave up on that dream and decided to become more Google-like. So much so that in 2011, Google accused Bing of ‘copying’ their results page after Google conducted a “sting” operation in which they injected fake search queries and observed them appearing on Bing. They said that Bing was mimicking Google results and suggested that Bing was using data from Google users (likely through toolbars) to inform its own search algorithm. Nothing much came of the “Bing Sting,” though. Why is this good, and what does it have to do with Microsoft Ads’ features?
When you go to create your first campaign in Microsoft Ads, it flat out asks you if you want to import your Google Ads into the platform. So, honestly, this feature isn’t really hidden at all. It will import everything, making campaign creation a breeze if you already have Google Ads set up. You can even set up a scheduled auto import, so that everything you add or change in Google Ads gets imported into Microsoft Ads on a regular basis.
So, the fact that Microsoft wants to copy everything Google is doing makes it easier for advertisers to set up and get started with Microsoft Ads. Now to some hidden features that fall into the possibly bad category if not addressed…
Don’t Ignore The Dropdowns
Whether you import campaigns from Google or start your campaigns from scratch, you need to check or double-check all settings at the campaign and ad group level. We’ll walk through these as if you are starting your campaigns from scratch, but you can always visit these by choosing settings in the left-hand navigation bar at the campaign or ad group level.
Campaign Level
- Location: The default choice when selecting where to target your campaign is Canada and the United States. If you only advertise in the US, then you have to choose ‘Let me choose specific locations’ to choose the US only. Once this is done, the default option below it is set to ‘People in, searching for, or viewing webpages about your targeted locations.’ This means that someone in France or Italy who is interested in the US product that you are selling could see your ad. If you don’t ship to those countries, then that is wasted ad spend. You would want to make sure you click ‘People in your targeted locations’ to hit that US audience only.
- Ad Creation: When you get to this step, Microsoft seems to make it easy by generating the ad copy for you based on the URL you put in. If you decide to use these, go through them with a fine-toothed comb. Here are some headlines that Microsoft created for a client that is a moving service. They do no home remodeling.
- Once you get to the Budget & Bid Strategy page, it’s easy to put these in and hit ‘Save & go to next step’ and completely ignore the ‘Advanced settings’ drop-down at the bottom. This one is very important. Once you click the arrow for the drop-down, you see selections for the following:
- Ad schedule, meaning what hours the ads should run. If you don’t see this and skip to the next page, your ads will run 24/7. This is not ideal if there is no one to answer your phones after a certain time of day.
- Ad Distribution. By default, this is set to the entire Microsoft Advertising Network. While this can get you a lower cost per click, it can also get you a ton of irrelevant traffic. Rarely, if ever, does traffic from the search network convert. So, here you can choose the better option of ‘Microsoft sites and select traffic.’ While this is better, it is still not great. More on that in a minute.
- At this point, you review the campaign, click ‘Go live’ and think you have hit all the settings needed. Not quite. If you click on the campaign you just created and then click ‘Settings’ at the bottom of the Overview column, you should come to the campaign setting screen. Scroll all the way to the bottom, and you’ll see another ‘Advanced settings’ drop down. It’s a bit deceptive, because you already did some advanced settings in the setup phase. So, you might think that is all there is here, but it’s not. There are several other options here, including a place to exclude certain domains from showing your ads and blocking IP addresses from seeing your ads.
Ad Group Level
- If you go back to where you see the ad group(s) for your ads and click on one of them, you can then click Settings again (in the column under Recommendations). Many of the options here default to campaign settings which usually is okay. However, there is also an Advanced settings drop down at the bottom of this page, which gives options for ad rotation preferences, confirmation of ad distribution, and ad group level domain exclusions.
You will also notice at both the campaign level and the ad group level that there is an option to adjust bids for Multimedia ads. The lowest you can go is an increase of 20%. While Microsoft says that if you don’t have auto-apply recommendations on you will not show for Multimedia ads, I always reduce this from the default 40% to 20% just in case, as there is a bit of non-transparency around where ads show anyway. That leads me to…
What is Select Traffic?
When you choose Microsoft sites and select traffic for your ad distribution, you may think (as most people do) that you have eliminated non-search related placements, like opting out of Google’s search partner network. While this does eliminate quite a bit of that traffic, it doesn’t eliminate all. So, what is this select traffic? I have asked this of Microsoft representatives and support many times. They won’t give out a list of the domains included in this. They will give you a short list of owned and operated sites, such as msn.com, outlook.live.com, and outlook.com. The bad thing is that when you run a web publisher report, meaning on what domains your ads showed, these sites show up by themselves away from Microsoft sites and select traffic. So, this tells us that these aren’t really included in select traffic.
At this point you think maybe include these owned and operated sites as excluded domains, right? Well, in one place on Microsoft Ads’ support site they say you can do this, but when you go to add them to the exclusion, it says you can’t. I still add them there, but there is no guarantee that they are actually excluded.
Even after doing all of this, you haven’t really eliminated select traffic, and I’m not sure there is a real way to do it, since we don’t know what it all is. I’ll give you an example of why I know that select traffic isn’t just those owned and operated sites.
We have a client who deals in the beauty industry. In one month on Google, the largest search engine in the world, they had 5,116 impressions. In that same month for Microsoft Ads, they had 69,355 impressions, even with everything toggled off and excluded. Going back to my second sentence here – Most estimates have Microsoft Ads search share only being around 11%, with Google having the majority of the rest. Of course, this doesn’t make sense. I searched around and found out that Microsoft partners with a website called salon.com. This site has nothing to do with beauty and is a flash news site. On a whim, I put that domain in as an exclusion and what do you know, traffic for Microsoft Ads is now about 10% of what it is for Google Ads.
Do I Even Go There?
This may have sounded like a lot, and you may be wondering if Microsoft Ads is even worth trying. Reading back through, I wasn’t very encouraging on that front, was I? So, I’ll go back to an earlier point. Microsoft Ads can be a great source of incremental conversions at a lower cost per click than Google, and we have seen this for a number of clients. You just need to know the ‘gotchas,’ and having the information above will help you start on the right foot to test it out.
If you feel you are ready to take the leap into pay per click advertising with Microsoft Ads, give us a shout. We’ve gone through all of the good, the bad, and the really bad, so you don’t have to!
Angie Batten
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